Digital Commons Network^™

The Educational Impact Of Taking Ethnic Studies In K12: A Mixed Methods Study Of Students In Ethnic Studies Courses, Lesley A. Rivera

Masters Theses (Archived)

This transformative mixed-methods study investigates the academic and personal impacts of Mexican American Studies (MAS) courses on South Texas high school students, addressing critical gaps in Texas-based research. Quantitative measures were combined with qualitative data from semi-structured interviews to reveal a comprehensive picture of MAS outcomes. While quantitative results show moderate academic gains, they also reveal MAS’s powerful role in fostering cultural understanding and student engagement. Qualitative analysis reinforces these findings through five intersecting themes: personal growth, representation, engagement and opportunities, empowerment, and challenges. Guided by Critical Race Theory, LatCrit, and Chicanx Studies, the research demonstrates that ethnic studies courses …

The Growing Teacher Shortage, Heather L. Chessher

Masters Theses (Archived)

Even before the global pandemic, but especially after COVID-19, the teacher retention numbers have been on the decline and the number of teachers who express teacher burnout has steadily risen. Teachers continue to face behavioral issues, work overload, and high student achievement expectations. Teaching is a stressful, intensive, and complex job that requires teachers to facilitate and support students’ personal growth and enable school performance (Johnson et al., 2014). Years of overload and high occupational stress often send teachers to early retirement and sometimes into different professional fields. Through a qualitative case study approach, this research explores the reasons some …

12-16-25 Bor Hsc Committee Meeting Agenda, Patricia Serna

HSC Committee (A subcommittee of the UNM Board of Regents)

12-16-25 BOR HSC Committee Meeting Agenda

Mitigating Risk Of Premature Ovarian Insufficiency Using Adjunct Chinese Herbal Medicines: A Nested Patient-Control Study In Female Cancer Patients With Chemotherapy, Tzu-Ning Tseng, Hou-Hsun Liao, Hanoch Livneh, Ming-Chi Lu, Szu-Chin Li, Tzung-Yi Tsai

Leadership, Learning and Counseling Faculty Publications and Presentations

Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a common late effect of chemotherapy among survivors of adolescent and young-adult cancer (AYAC). Given on the widespread use of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) in restoring individual health, we performed a cohort-based nested patient-control study with the aim of exploring the effect of blending CHM into routine care on the reduction of chemotherapy-induced POIrisk among females with AYAC.

Work-Life Conflict, Anxiety, And Depression In Collegiate Athletic Trainers With Children Under 5, Jordan Helton, Glenn R. Penny, Seth Swary

Student Dissertations

The research problem for this study was that collegiate athletic trainers with children under 5 years old experience significant work-life conflict and negative mental health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to explore how collegiate ATs with young children describe their experiences of work-life conflict and to how these experiences relate to symptoms of anxiety and depression. Guided by interrole conflict theory and work-life conflict theory the study posed two research questions: (1) How do collegiate ATs with children under 5 describe their experiences of work-life conflict? (2) What is the relationship work-life conflict experiences on the symptoms …

Three-Dimensional Printing Of Calcium Phosphate-Mesoporous Bioactive Glass Scaffolds For Bone Tissue Engineering, Ana Beatriz Gomes De Carvalho, Lais Medeiros Cardoso, Igor Paulino Mendes Soares, Joyce Rodrigues De Souza, Arpita Roy, Prabaha Sikder, Et. Al.

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Calcium phosphate cements (CPCs) and biomaterials, such as mesoporous bioactive glass (MBG), are critical for bone tissue engineering. This study aimed to 3D-print CPC scaffolds modified with MBG to enhance their osteogenic potential and regenerative ability. MBG powder was synthesized and characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and nitrogen adsorption-desorption techniques. A commercial CPC ink (hydroxyapatite/alpha-tricalcium phosphate) was mixed with 5% MBG (w/w; CPC/MBG), and, after rheological assessment, the mixture was used to obtain scaffolds via 3D printing. These scaffolds were then tested for chemical, morphological, and mechanical properties, as well as ion release analysis. Unmodified CPC …

Exploring The Impact Of A Four-Day School Week On Teachers’ Mental Health, Kelly Lewis

Masters Theses (Archived)

No abstract provided.

How Racism Affects Attitudes About Post-Secondary Education, Anne Duong

Masters Theses (Archived)

As the number of students of color in America continues to increase each year, these minority groups remain underrepresented in higher education. The educational system must adapt and make changes to better serve the diverse cultures and backgrounds of new students. Recognizing the presence of structural and systemic racism in American history, this research aims to explore whether racism affects students' learning experiences in K-12 schools and how this, in turn, influences their attitudes toward pursuing post-secondary education. The study focuses on high school students in 12th grade from a Texas public school, representing the backgrounds of students of color. …

Factors Influencing Hispanic Students Obtaining A Post-Secondary Degree, Amy Paz

Masters Theses (Archived)

This qualitative case study explored the factors influencing Hispanic students’ decisions to pursue post-secondary education. Guided by the research question, What factors influence Hispanic students’ decision on obtaining a post-secondary college degree? the study examined the lived experiences of five participants who pursued various pathways, including two- and four-year institutions, vocational training, and workforce entry. Semi-structured interviews revealed four central themes: (1) influence and motivation, (2) cultural and educational background, (3) challenges and barriers, and (4) the importance of a college degree. Findings highlighted the significant role of family as both motivators and guides, the influence of cultural values, and …

"The Yellow Wall-Paper": Decoding Medical Patriarchal Structures (A Common Theme Within Gothic Literature/Horror), Yvonne T. Samuels

Masters Theses (Archived)

This paper makes the claim that Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” encoded the medical system as part of the patriarchy used to control and harm women, especially within the 19^th Century, and how this is a common theme within gothic literature and modern-day horror. Through the Feminist Literary Criticism framework and the methodology of textual analysis, certain literary devices Gilman uses, including the Gothic trope of the narrator’s environment in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is analyzed to reveal women living in a patriarchal society during the 19^thCentury and the medical system being a source of power. “The …

Experiences Of Transgender Individuals In Healthcare: Towards Establishing An Affirming Model Of Care, Nathan Levitt

Biennial Convention (CONV)

Issue: In recognition of the health disparities among the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population, health authorities have called for increased knowledge and research. Evidence shows that transgender individuals often face the most severe forms of discrimination and health disparities. Given this, establishing an affirming care model is crucial for guiding both research and practice. The purpose of the literature review is to provide insight into the current state of knowledge on the experiences of transgender communities in healthcare to contextualize the need for an affirming framework.

Description: Relevant peer-reviewed articles were retrieved from Ovid MEDLINE(R), OVID …

Umn Morris Students Tell A Good Sustainability Story, Communications And Marketing

Campus News Archive

No abstract provided.

Program Agenda 12-16-25, Angela Brock

Programs Committee (PC)

No abstract provided.

Approved Programs 12-16-25, Angela Brock

Programs Committee (PC)

No abstract provided.

Is Ai Replacing Human Mental Health Professionals?, Michiko Ueda

Population Health Research Brief Series

An increasing number of people are turning to generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools and AI-assisted chatbots to manage mental health concerns. This data slice presents findings from a national survey of U.S. adults aged 18-49 (N = 1,805) conducted in October 2025. Among respondents, 35.2% reported using AI tools more than once a week for mental health support. Among those who had ever seen a human mental health professional, 28.4% reported visiting human providers less often since beginning to use AI for the same purpose. The findings suggest that a subset of users may be using AI to replace, rather …

Traumatic And Incidental Diaphragmatic Hernias In Adults: A Case Series Highlighting Diagnostic Challenges, Surgical Management, And Postoperative Outcomes, Prajwal Chandrashekhara, Chanchal Raj Chhallani, Preethi Hiremath

Manipal Journal of Medical Sciences

Background:
Diaphragmatic hernia (DH) in adults, although uncommon, presents a significant clinical challenge due to its variable symptoms and potential for life-threatening complications. The condition can be either traumatic or congenital, and in some cases, it may be found incidentally during imaging for unrelated conditions. This case series aims to highlight the diverse clinical presentations, diagnostic challenges, surgical management strategies, and postoperative outcomes associated with diaphragmatic hernias in adults.

Methods:
We present four cases of diaphragmatic hernias diagnosed in adult patients, including both traumatic and incidental findings. Case 1 involves a 26-year-old male with a traumatic diaphragmatic hernia following a …

A Proteogenomic Gene Signature Defines Prognostic Subgroups Highlighting Pi3k/Akt/Mtor Signaling Pathway As A Therapeutic Vulnerability In Myeloid Malignancies, Fan He, Shuyang Lin, Bei Gao, Varun Ramesh, Alexander B Kim, Tim Kong, Daniel A C Fisher, Christopher T Letson, Molly Brakhane, Mary Fulbright, Yanbo Yu, Marco Sardiello, Jorge Di Paola, Stephen M Sykes, Stephen T Oh

2020-Current year OA Pubs

INTRODUCTION: Myeloid malignancies, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN), exhibit overlapping pathophysiology. Chronic MPNs can transform into secondary AML (sAML), which is associated with poor prognosis and limited treatment options. However, the process and prognostic significance of leukemic transformation remain incompletely understood.

METHOD: Through a two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis, we showed that genetic liability to MPN significantly predicts the risk of developing AML, establishing MPN as the precursor to leukemia. To identify mediators of this risk, we integrated population-level plasma proteomics data, identifying 55 proteins associated with MPN. Upon integrative analysis with the BEAT-AML cohort, …

Holter Monitor Qt Dispersion And Qtc-Dispersion In Pediatric Long Qt Syndrome And Development Of A Diagnostic And Arrhythmia Risk Prediction Model, Hadeel Allam, Na Le Dang, Edita Karasalihovic, Nathan Miller, Lisa Roelle, William B Orr, Dustin Nash, Anthony G Pompa, Jennifer N A Silva

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Holter monitors can provide temporal QT analysis, allowing for calculation of QT dispersion and corrected QT dispersion over time. We describe the results of the QT dispersion and corrected QT dispersion over a 24-hour period in pediatric patients with long QT syndrome (LQTS), compared with a normal cohort, and develop 2 new machine learning models for diagnosis and arrhythmia risk prediction in LQTS.

METHODS: A single-center retrospective case-control study was conducted comparing patients with congenital LQTS and normal controls who underwent a clinically indicated Holter between January 2022 and May 2024. After identifying patients with cardiac events, 2 neural …

Baseline Ecg And Cardiovascular Outcomes In People With Hiv: Insights From Reprieve, Aya Awwad, Shashwatee Bagchi, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: With antiretroviral therapy, people with HIV (PWH) have an increased burden of cardiovascular disease. The REPRIEVE (Randomized Trial to Prevent Vascular Events in HIV) trial demonstrated that pitavastatin reduces major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) among PWH at low to moderate traditional atherosclerotic risk. Electrocardiographic abnormalities are common in PWH, but little is known about their association with MACEs. We sought to examine whether baseline electrocardiographic abnormalities are associated with increased MACE risk among a global primary cardiovascular disease prevention cohort of PWH in REPRIEVE.

METHODS: In this observational analysis, entry electrocardiographic abnormalities were adjudicated and classified as major or …

The Inferred Functional Connectome Underlying Circadian Synchronization In The Mouse Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, K L Nikhil, Bharat Singhal, Daniel Granados-Fuentes, Jr-Shin Li, István Z Kiss, Erik D Herzog

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Circadian rhythms in mammals arise from the spatiotemporal synchronization of ~20,000 neuronal clocks in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). Although anatomical, molecular, and genetic approaches have revealed diverse SCN cell types, how network-level wiring enables their synchronization remains unclear. To overcome the challenges of inferring functional connectivity from fixed tissue, we developed Mutual Information & Transfer Entropy (MITE), an information-theoretic framework to infer directed cell-cell connections with high fidelity from long-term live-cell imaging. Recording and analyzing 3,290 h of clock gene expression from 8,261 SCN neurons across 17 mice, we uncovered a highly conserved, sparse SCN network organized into two asymmetrically …

Exploiting Large Language Models For Diagnosing Autism Associated Language Disorders And Identifying Distinct Features, Chuanbo Hu, Wenqi Li, Mindi Ruan, Xiangxu Yu, Shalaka Deshpande, Lynn K Paul, Shuo Wang, Xin Li

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Diagnosing language disorders associated with autism is a complex challenge, often hampered by the subjective nature and variability of traditional assessment methods. In this study, we explored large language models (LLMs) to overcome the speed and precision obstacles by enhancing sensitivity and profiling linguistic features for autism diagnosis. This research utilizes natural language understanding capabilities of LLMs to simplify and improve the diagnostic process, focusing on identifying autism-related language patterns. We showed that the proposed method demonstrated improvements over the baseline models, with over a 10% increase in both sensitivity and positive predictive value in a zero-shot learning configuration. Combining …

Resident-Led Peer Support Groups In Emergency Medicine: A Pilot Framework For Peer Leader Training, Kyra D Reed, Alexandria P Weston, Alexandra E Serpe, Destiny D Folk, Jacob M Destrampe, Heather P Kelker, Aloysius J Humbert, Katie E Pettit, Julie L Welch

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Peer support has demonstrated efficacy in alleviating symptoms of anxiety and depression, while fostering empathy and mitigating burnout among healthcare professionals. Given the considerable demands of residency training, there is a strong rationale for resident-led peer support interventions. However, structured programs to train residents for such leadership roles remain limited. Our objective was to implement a peer support leader training program for residents, evaluate its perceived effectiveness, and identify common themes discussed in sessions. Between June 2021 and June 2023, we performed a longitudinal, prospective cohort survey study of Emergency Medicine (EM) and EM/Pediatrics (EM/P) residents participating in a novel …

Wdfy4-Dependent Cross-Presentation Proceeds Via A Vacuolar Antigen-Processing Route, J Luke Postoak, Alyssa Koch, Sicong Shan, Ray A Ohara, Suin Jo, Jing Chen, Pritesh Desai, Feiya Ou, Magdalena Kraft, Michael S Diamond, Sunkyung Kim, Theresa L Murphy, Kenneth M Murphy

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The intracellular processing route used by type I conventional dendritic cells (cDC1) for cross-presentation of viral- or tumor-associated antigens remains controversial. One model proposes that captured antigens exit from damaged phagolysosomes and enter the cytosol, where they are processed for presentation by MHC class I molecules (MHC-I). This model relies on proteasomal degradation and TAP-dependent peptide transport into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) for loading by the peptide loading complex (PLC). An alternative model proposes a vesicular route in which captured antigens are retained and processed within an endocytic compartment. A compelling argument favoring the cytosolic model is the dramatic loss …

Intracellular Acinetobacter Baumannii Acts As A Transient Reservoir In Lung Infection Via A "Persist And Resist" Strategy, Manon Janet-Maitre, Gisela Di Venanzio, Clay D Jackson-Litteken, Nichollas E Scott, Mario F Feldman

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Although considered primarily extracellular,

Limbic System And Bipolar Disorder, A Narrative Review, Gauri Bharadwaj, Sanskriti Kondilya, Ankita Gupta, Lakshmisha Rao, Syeda Fatima Zehra

Manipal Journal of Medical Sciences

Bipolar disorder refers to a chronic mood disorder in which an individual experiences extreme changes in mood and emotions. The impact that the limbic system exerts on the genesis and regulation of bipolar disorder has been a subject of study, and various techniques have been employed to study this relationship. This article aims to extrapolate data to present a summary of the structural and functional variations in the limbic system and their influence on a specific mental health condition, bipolar disorder. Understanding the convergence of structural, functional and molecular aberrations as well as genetic susceptibility within the limbic system will …

Beyond The Ordinary: A Case Report On A Giant Choledochal Cyst, Isha Saxena, Naresh Kumar J, Pareekshith Raghupal, Santosh Rai, Jayateertha Joshi

Manipal Journal of Medical Sciences

Choledochal cysts are rare congenital abnormalities of the biliary tract (1), with an incidence of 1:1000 births in the Asian population, with a female predominance. They usually appear within the first decade of life, presenting with symptoms like abdominal pain, jaundice, and a palpable abdominal mass. Todani et al. (2) classified them into five types. Common diagnostic techniques include ultrasound, CT, MRCP and ERCP. This case report presents a 14-year-old female with a giant type 1 choledochal cyst, successfully managed with cholecystectomy and Roux-en-Y jejunostomy.

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Relationships Between Cultural Factors And Motor Abilities In Autistic And Non-Autistic Children, Lindsey Anderson, Allison Gladfelter, Milijana Buac, Waifong Catherine Cheung, Ziteng Wang, Sinan Onal

CISLL Publications

Autism and motor abilities have been found to be closely related. Culture affects motor development as well as various diagnostic criteria for an autism diagnosis, yet cultural factors are rarely considered in research and in clinical diagnostics. This study explored the relationship between cultural factors, characteristics of autism, and balance abilities in autistic (n = 16) and non-autistic (n = 28) children by utilizing a demographic survey, the Social Responsiveness Scale, 2nd edition (SRS-2), and the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) Balance subtest. A multiple linear regression model was used to analyze whether the relationship between autism characteristics and …

Intradistrict Inequality: Examining Educational Opportunity In Richmond Elementary Schools, Tara Sheehan

Honors Theses

Educational inequality in the U.S. is often discussed across district lines, but differences between schools within the same district are just as significant. This paper examines intradistrict disparities in Richmond Public Schools (RPS) by comparing William Fox Elementary and Broad Rock Elementary. Although both schools operate under the same district, they serve very different student populations and produce markedly different outcomes. William Fox serves mostly White and economically advantaged students, with higher test scores, lower absenteeism, fewer behavioral incidents, and access to a wide range of enrichment programs. Broad Rock, on the other hand, serves predominantly Hispanic and Black students, …

Toward Climate Resilient Cities: Endorsing Green Justice Amid Unequal Distribution And Disparities In Fast-Sprawling Urban Nagpur, Prajakta Pimpalshende, Manu Thomas, Jayshree Shukla, Shruti Lahoti, Shalini Dhyani

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Population expansion and accelerated land development frequently overlook the inclusion of green infrastructure, leading to disparities in Urban Green Space (UGS) distribution. In rapidly urbanizing cities of the Global South, ensuring socio-ecological connectivity is vital for promoting sustainable, climate-resilient, multifunctional landscapes. This study uses Nagpur, a rapidly expanding Indian city, as a case study to investigate spatial inequities in UGS access through the lens of green justice. We employed the Demand Supply Gap assessment (World Health Organization and Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation, Government of India guidelines), the 3-30-300 green space rule as a guiding principle to …