Digital Commons Network^™

Distributing Composition: Rhetorical Agency In First-Year Writing, Elizabeth Novotny

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This project centers on engaging students in class lessons related to rhetorical agency. Typically understood as the capacity to act, within rhetoric, I define agency as the capacity to make meaning. In most traditional Western conceptions, agency is primarily located with the individual rhetor. However, these views were increasingly challenged throughout the later twentieth century as theorists from various traditions came to understand that discussing our agency as solely our own doing was insufficient. In contrast to an individualistic understanding of agency, theories that characterize rhetorical agency as more fragmented have evolved, where, instead of writing and rhetoric being …

Energy Equity In India’S Renewable Energy Transition: A Policy Design Agenda, Aritra Chakrabarty

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

India’s transition to renewable energy has prioritized large-scale, grid-based electrification, often overlooking energy equity, particularly in rural communities. Many households would benefit more from decentralized solutions than from grid extension, yet current policies neither guarantee equitable access nor address pre-existing social and economic inequalities in energy distribution. This dissertation examines the sensitivity of India’s renewable energy policies to energy equity, with a specific focus on gender equity in rural last-mile connectivity. The study is guided by the fundamental question: How can implementation of solar energy program alleviate the lives of rural communities? Using a mixed-method approach that combines policy …

Confidence-Based Knowledge Distillation To Reduce Training Costs And Carbon Footprint For Low-Resource Neural Machine Translation, P. J. Wall, Rejwanul Haque, Maria Zafar

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Backgrounds And The Perception Of Tones In Mandarin, Abigail Franks

Honors Program Theses

No abstract provided.

Acoustic Analysis Of Vowels In Foreign-Accented English, Hannah Nedder

Honors Program Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Of Both Parent And Child Technology Use On Developing Literacy Abilities, Ava Mcmenomy

Honors Program Theses

This study explored the effects of both parent and child technology use on developing literacy abilities. Research is limited in this area, but is becoming increasingly important as technology continues to evolve and become more commonplace in the lives of both adults and children. This study aimed to determine if there was a correlation between technology use and decreased literacy abilities of children. This study also explored if increased technology use in conjunction with decreased quality of parent-child interactions resulted in decreased literacy skills. Research was conducted through a survey and 15 responses were analyzed. No decreased literacy abilities of …

Art As The Prosecutor’S Weapon: The Use Of Rap Lyrics Evidence At Trial, Thompson, Mikah K., Raheem, Sierra

Santa Clara Law Review

Are rap lyrics worthy of the same protections that other forms of creative expression enjoy, or is there something inherent to rap lyrics that renders them autobiographical, confessional, and reflective of the author’s true intentions and desires? This Article will attempt to answer that question. In doing so, the authors will take the reader on a voyage through a history that is not widely known among the attorneys, judges, expert witnesses, and jurors who are frequently called upon to interpret the art form known as Hip Hop.

This journey requires an exploration of our country’s history of chattel slavery, for …

Cascadian Independence: A Rising Movement For An Independent Northwest Amid Growing Regionalism In The United States And Canada, Elias V. Savitt

Capstone Showcase

Because of the Civil War, secession is a sore topic to many Americans. However, the idea of secession has not been confined to this notorious example. My essay focuses on the idea that Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia could be the basis for a unified autonomous or even independent entity called Cascadia. First, I discuss the history of secession as such, and the arguments that have been made pro and con as to its legality and under what situations. I then situate this within the histories of the United States and Canada and the phenomena of regionalism and independent movements. …

Finding Futures: Refusing Canva And The Homogenization Of The D.I.Y. Political Post(Er), Cassidy Bensko

Scripps Senior Theses

The convergence of corporate technology and subversive political expression is not new. Canva, like Xerox, is but another made-for-the-office technological innovation employed to political ends. Its ease-of-use has made it a staple tool for students, office workers, event planners, and political organizers alike. However, it is easy to use because it eliminates the need for creative decision-making, empowering users to quickly and easily produce designs that all look the same. This paper asks: Is the homogenization of D.I.Y. political posters, a medium that has historically been characterized by design elements that are as subversive as the politics they represent, indicative …

Sounding Like A Normal Gay: A Sociophonetic Analysis Of Homonormativity And Identity Performance On The Lgbtq Right, Maralina Caldas

Scripps Senior Theses

Previous linguistic research has noted the remarkable ability of LGBTQ speakers to tailor their identity expression contextually based on the perceived safety of their context: studies of queer style-shifting have contrasted this group’s behavior in queer-friendly contexts with their speech in socially conservative ones. However, the patterns identified by this research do not account for the behaviors of outspokenly conservative queer people whose political ‘safe spaces’ are unaccepting of their queer identity. In order to index their belonging to two groups that are frequently in opposition with one another, I suggest that the style shifting behaviors of LGBTQ conservatives may …

Influencias Intergeneracionales De La Italianidad En La Vida Doméstica Y En La Esfera Pública De Argentina: Un Análisis De La Lingüística, La Comida Y La Identidad, Sage A. Wong-Davies

Scripps Senior Theses

In Argentina there are many people of Italian heritage due to the large wave of Italian immigration at the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century. Through personal interviews and analyses of preexisting research, this thesis examines how the Italian influence has become incorporated in Argentinian culture on a national level and in the family culture of Argentinians with Italian heritage. This thesis specifically considers the Italian influence in Argentina through the lenses of linguistics and language, food, and identity. It determines that “italianidad” is very integrated in Argentinian culture in all of these …

Between Science And Fantasy: Dirt In Kingsley’S Fairy-Tale Vision, Sandra M. Alba Jimenez

Student Papers (English)

No abstract provided.

Integrating Protein Language Model And Molecular Dynamics Simulations To Discover Antibiofouling Peptides, Ibrahim A. Imam, Shea Bailey, Duolin Wang, Shuai Zeng, Dong Xu, Qing Shao

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Antibiofouling peptide materials prevent the nonspecific adsorption of proteins on devices, enabling them to perform their designed functions as desired in complex biological environments. Due to their importance, research on antibiofouling peptide materials has been one of the central subjects of interfacial engineering. However, only a few antibiofouling peptide sequences have been developed. This narrow scope of antibiofouling peptide materials limits their capacity to adapt to the broad spectrum of application scenarios. To address this issue, we searched for antibiofouling peptides in the vast sequence pool of the microbiome library using a combination of deep learning-based high-throughput search and molecular …

Identifying Barriers To The Utilization Of Translation Services Among Immigrant Populations With Limited English Proficiency, Adama Barry

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Background: The number of patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) has increased in the United States, indicating the growing importance of addressing their healthcare needs. Aim: To examine existing translation services and explore the challenges healthcare providers encounter in their use.

Methods: A mixed-methods cross-sectional survey was conducted among providers, registered nurses, and medical assistants at a diverse urgent care clinic in a city in Washington State.

Results: Interpreter availability, technological disruptions, training gaps, and interpreter accuracy emerged as significant barriers.

Implications for Practice: Comprehensive improvements in interpreter service accessibility, technological reliability, and cultural competency training.

An Integrative Approach To Diabetes Education In The Immigrant Somali Community, Bilal Kadri, Amina Osman

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease with numerous health and financial ramifications, especially for vulnerable populations like Somali immigrants. Effective management of diabetes requires adequate knowledge and management skills. Traditional diabetes education programs are ineffective for Somali immigrants because they do not account for their unique social, cultural, and traditional backgrounds. This study implemented a culturally sensitive, in-person, interactive education session for 14 first-generation Somali immigrants with type 2 diabetes. The effectiveness of the study was evaluated with pre- and post-education tests, as well as the participants’ self-confidence in managing diabetes. Mean test scores and a paired t-test were calculated …

Pain Versus Neuropsychiatric Symptoms In Residents With Dementia: A Nursing Staff Educational Training, Rebecca Hildreth

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

BACKGROUND: Pain assessment in patients with dementia is challenging due to cognitive and communication impairments, making the older adult population highly susceptible to poor pain assessment and treatment.

AIM: The purpose of this project is to accurately identify the cause of agitation in residents with dementia. Specific aims include 1) to collect background demographic data on residents, 2) to educate nursing staff on pain assessment in dementia patients, and 3) to educate nursing staff about the risks associated with antipsychotic medications to prioritize using non-pharmacologic interventions to treat agitation.

METHODS: A chart review of residents residing in a suburban, Pacific …

Queers, Closets, And Corporate Governance, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

The past few years have seen several corporate diversity initiatives that include Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ+) people. In 2020, Nasdaq, the world’s second-largest stock exchange, and California, the largest state, both adopted rules to encourage board diversity for underrepresented groups, including LGBTQ+ people. Since that time, the Los Angeles Superior Court struck down California’s law, the Fifth Circuit invalidated Nasdaq’s rule, and the Trump administration initiated a slew of anti-Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and anti-LGBTQ+ measures. In the context of this sharp ideological turn, this Article attempts to step back and tackle a larger question: how can …

Unveiling Secrecy: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Proceedings, Taylor Bettis

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Grand juries have faced heightened scrutiny in recent decades following high-profile cases involving police use of lethal force against Black civilians. In 2020, Police officers killed Breonna Taylor while executing a search warrant at her home. Despite widespread public outcry, it remains unclear how prosecutors failed to indict the officers involved on charges directly related to her death. Guided by critical race theory, procedural justice, and theories of authority, the current project used reflexive thematic analysis to examine the Breonna Taylor grand jury proceedings. We identified two main themes: structural influences and narrative influences. Structural influences examine how prosecutorial authority, …

Nonfiction Forms In Contemporary Poetry By Black And Asian American Writers, Elizabeth J. Mitchell

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Writers experiment with form inside poetry for various reasons, including a desire for play. Creating poetry is a creative process that involves experimentation. This research highlights poetry that adapts established nonfiction forms into poetry forms, examining poetry published in 2000-2024 by Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander American (AANHPI) writers and Black writers (writers of African ancestry) within the United States. For writers of color especially, nonfiction forms can provide a different way of entering into conversations about race, ethnicity, gender, identity, power, privilege, and authority. This research examines poetry by A. Van Jordan, Franny Choi, Alison C. Rollins, …

Teacher Professional Development Related To Emergent Bilinguals: Teacher Perceptions And Experiences, Courtney Simko

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

As of 2021, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that there are 5.3 million students whose first language is one other than English, or are emergent bilinguals (EBs), in the United States. If teachers are not prepared adequately, they are not able to meet the needs of students appropriately. The following study sought to determine whether or not public school elementary teachers in Southeastern Michigan felt prepared to teach EBs, as well as their perceptions of the training they received. This information is important, as it is necessary to identify gaps in professional learning by determining whether teachers feel …

A Generative Account Of English Exclamatives, Christa Niemann

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Exclamatives are an intriguing case study of the syntax-semantics interface. Despite several attempts to define them and explain their properties, there has not yet been convergence on a general theory of the exclamative sentence type. This thesis aims to unify existing approaches to exclamatives and explain a wider range of data by modifying and extending Zanuttini and Portner (2003). The critical modification allows exclamatives to be formed via operators other than wh-, which, when combined with factivity, ultimately yields exclamativity. The implications of this proposed analysis are investigated for both familiar and previously unexplored data. The modified analysis has several …

Language Barriers In Clinical Trials: Exploring Impacts On Continuity And Participants’ Engagement And Effective Mitigation Strategies, Harsha Ani Das

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Clinical trials are crucial for advancing medical knowledge and developing new treatments. However, language barriers can pose significant challenges for participants, particularly in understanding trial procedures, risks, and benefits. Existing policies, guidelines, and studies from 2020 to 2024 identify key challenges in recruiting and retaining non-English-speaking participants. The lack of data on dropout rates highlights the need for improved language services and culturally sensitive communication methods. Findings demonstrate the importance of addressing linguistic disparities to enhance trial inclusivity and success. Innovative strategies to overcome language-related hurdles include the use of professional interpreters, translated materials, and community engagement initiatives. By addressing …

Agentic Ai Systems In Professional Domains: A Probabilistic Framework For Role Suitability And Legal Accountability, Matthew Veach

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis presents a cross-sector analysis of agentic AI systems deployed in STEM, education, healthcare, and enterprise domains, with a focus on role suitability, orchestration maturity, and legal accountability. It introduces the Bounded Agentic Suitability Envelope, a dual-bound scoring framework that evaluates deployment viability using weighted assessments of agent capability and decomposed role complexity. Through case studies from Fujitsu, Cleveland Clinic, Carnegie Learning, and Duolingo, the thesis demonstrates measurable gains in efficiency, personalization, and compliance. It argues for an augmentation-first strategy, preserving human roles in high-context domains while enabling targeted replacement in low-complexity workflows. To mitigate risk, the thesis formalizes …

English Pronouns: Default Case And Conversion, Olivia Ziemelis

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Case is a well-defined feature of generative syntax. However, the phenomenon of default Case, while widely accepted and discussed, is less defined in its triggers and limitations. The main body of work that seeks to explore default Case is that of Schütze (2001), which presents the main principles of default Case as well as the environments in which it may occur. The purpose of this thesis is to explore default Case at a deeper level, focusing on the interactions of Case, structure, and phi-features to determine how exactly the mechanism works. To achieve this, the data set used consists of …

Evaluating Educational Bias In Executive Function Assessments: A Comparison Of Reacstick And The Nih Toolbox In Individuals With Multiple Sclerosis, Maura Lane

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigated the influence of educational attainment on executive function performance across two cognitive assessment tools—ReacStick (RS) and the National Institute of Health Cognition Toolbox Cognition Battery (NIH Toolbox-CB)— in individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS). Participants with confirmed MS diagnoses completed both cognitive assessment tools, and the correlation between years of education and task performance was analyzed to evaluate the presence of educational bias. Results showed that NIH Toolbox-CB scores were significantly associated with education level, whereas RS parameters did not demonstrate this relationship. These findings suggest that RS performance may be less influenced by educational background and could …

Ski Resorts And Rural Energy Resiliency: How Colorado’S Ski Industry Could Help Reduce Energy Vulnerability In Rural Mountain Communities, Jonathan Skule

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Bridging Digital Literacy Gaps With Ai-Driven Semantic Search Technologies, Bin Hu, Hong Xie, Ifrah Malik, Noman Sohail, Qiyang Chen, Razaz Waheeb Attar

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study examined how digital literacy influences user interactions with artificial intelligence–driven semantic search engines compared with traditional keyword-based search systems. The authors assessed whether an artificial intelligence–driven search enhances efficiency, query quality, and user satisfaction across varying digital literacy levels, in particular complex information retrieval tasks. Sixty participants, categorized into three digital literacy groups (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) on the basis of the European Commission’s Digital Competence Framework, completed six search tasks (three simple, three complex) using both traditional and artificial intelligence–driven search engines. Performance was measured by task completion time, query quality, and user satisfaction. Statistical analyses (analysis …

A Conversation On Feminist Digital Humanities, Jessica Frazier, Tamar Carroll, Shweta Sachdeva Jha, Leandra Zarnow

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The forum below came into being out of a curiosity to learn more about feminist scholars’ creation and use of digital humanities projects, platforms, and media to forward their research and teaching. Participants discussed the possibilities and perils of feminist digital humanities projects as they shared their unique experiences and perspectives. Larger trends in the conception, design, and operation of feminist digital humanities are visible in the conversation that follows—notably all three participants expressed a desire to work with digital media as a means of producing and sharing feminist knowledge and resistance narratives with broader audiences.

Latina Triunfadoras: Testimonios And Consejos Of Latina Superintendents In California, Marisela Kinn

LMU Theses and Dissertations

The current dissertation examined the leadership of six Latina leaders in the executive role of the superintendency, presenting valuable testimonios (M. A. Martinez et al., 2017) that detail the early educational and familial experiences shaping the Latina superintendents’ journeys to the superintendency. The qualitative study used the community cultural wealth framework (Yosso, 2005) and a feminista perspective grounded in Chicana/Latina feminist epistemology (Delgado Bernal, 1998) and Latina leadership (Bordas, 2013, 2023) to explore the leadership principles employed by the six superintendents. The study revealed three significant findings. First, Latina superintendents’ parents instilled a work ethic of perseverance, hard work, and …

Bruen: The Court's Announcement Of The Historical Analogy Test And The Aftermath Thereof, Michael Partrick

Wyoming Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s history of analyzing firearms restrictions has seemingly always led to ambiguities and confusion in lower courts. This was especially true after 2008, when the Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). In the years following Heller, lower courts across the country applied different standards to determine the constitutionality of firearms restrictions. The Court granted certiorari in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022) to establish the proper test for determining whether a firearm regulation is constitutional. This test is based on U.S. …