Digital Commons Network^™

Unexpected Wins: Curating Comics And Teaching Manga From The Dark Horse Comics Collection, Elsa Loftis, Jon Holt

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

A familiar staple of entertainment for a wide variety of readers, the comic book has not always held a regular place in the academic library. Concerning themselves with collecting more traditional expressions of scholarship, libraries have not historically dedicated much of their acquisitions budgets to this area. Therefore, the comic book or graphic novel was largely relegated to someone’s personal collection and would more likely be found on the shelves of a comic book store than the shelves of a university library.

Fast-forward to the present day, where library collections more commonly provide access to comic books, either in regular …

A Test Of Subjective Versus Objective Language Proficiency: An Investigation Of Age Of Acquisition And Exposure In Multilinguals, Anastina B. Steiber

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This research used the BEST dataset gathered in 2017 by de Bruin and colleagues, which contains information gathered from 650 multilingual participants (435 female, Mage = 25.02) from the Basque Country at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL). Multilingual individuals may have different levels of proficiency in each language they speak, and there are various factors that can influence proficiency. Such factors include the age at which they begin learning a language and how much exposure they have to the language. Proficiency can be assessed both subjectively (personal perception of proficiency) and objectively (observed and/or measured …

Trauma‐Informed Care Implementation Assessment Instrument, Karen Cellarius, Aliza Tuttle, Christine A. Da Rosa

Regional Research Institute for Human Services

Trauma Informed Oregon’s Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) Implementation Tool provides a framework for incorporating trauma-informed policies, practices and care into any organization’s structure. It was originally created in 2022 by Trauma Informed Oregon (TIO) and the Human Services Implementation Lab (iLab) at Portland State University’s Regional Research Institute. Implementation of Trauma-Informed Care is an ongoing process and is not expected to happen all at once. Systematically assessing TIC implementation accomplishes two things. First, it documents the extent that the organization is trauma-informed and clearly identifies systemic strengths, weaknesses and gaps. Second, it helps the organization decide on overall goals, and identify …

Educational Myths Of An American Empire: Colonial Narratives And The Meriam Report, Madhu Narayanan

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Meriam Report is a remarkable historical artifact of the United States' colonial project. The idea of a stronger nation through education embodied in the report betrays the report's imperial core. The report's authors express moral outrage at the failure of the United States to respect the human dignity of Native Americans. To absolve these failures, the report repeatedly looks to education as the way forward. My interest is in the discursive construction of that argument, specifically how new discourses of progress, scientific management, and modern administrative principles were used to justify expansion of the federal government and solidify the …

#Blackatcmo: Challenging Charter Schools Through Youth Instagram Counterstories, Madhu Narayanan, Matthew Mccluskey

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

As protests flared in 2020, Black students took to Instagram to voice their experiences at ‘no-excuses’ Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). Such schools have presented a discourse of high achievement and social justice. Yet, in the span of a few weeks, hundreds of posts on Instagram offered rarely heard counter-narratives of the experience of being a student of Color at such schools. This paper analyzes how social media posts combine online discourse and youth culture to provide insight into the racialized experience of schooling. We show how these posts created distinct visual signatures, co-opted the well-crafted narratives of CMOs, and took …

Implications With Identifying Gifted Black Students: A Study Of Implicit Bias, Christen H. Diehl

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine if implicit bias among Indiana educators might affect the identification of gifted Black students for programming. Educators, within school districts with high minority populations, were asked to provide a demographic survey and then take the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Survey data were then collected to determine if potential demographic information like gender, race, the possession of a high ability license, years of experience, highest collegiate degree, or their professional role had a statistical significance when compared to their IAT score. Using t-tests and one-way ANOVAs, demographic data were able to be …

Structured Dialogue State Management For Task-Oriented Dialogue Systems, Anh Duong Trinh

Doctoral

Human-machine conversational agents have developed at a rapid pace in recent years, bolstered through the application of advanced technologies such as deep learning. Today, dialogue systems are useful in assisting users in various activities, especially task-oriented dialogue systems in specific dialogue domains. However, they continue to be limited in many ways. Arguably the biggest challenge lies in the complexity of natural language and interpersonal communication, and the lack of human context and knowledge available to these systems. This leads to the question of whether dialogue systems, and in particular task-oriented dialogue systems, can be enhanced to leverage various language properties. …

Towards An Improved Understanding Of The Concept Of Style And Its Implications For Textual Style Transfer, Somayeh Jafaritazehjani

Doctoral

The concept of linguistic style denotes that many aspects of text can vary while maintaining a same source core semantic meaning. For example, a message may be written in a formal or informal style. The textual style transfer problem aims at generating a paraphrase of a given text by modifying its style while preserving its content. To the best of our knowledge, within the literature on textual style transfer, there is no standard widely accepted definition of the concept of style. Moreover, very few works have investigated the characteristics of language styles. Therefore, previous research, as far as our knowledge …

Meta-Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of Project-Based Learning Approach On Academic Achievement In Higher Education Worldwide, Ziyu Meng

Doctoral Dissertations

This research study conducted a meta-analysis to integrate the studies that investigated the effectiveness of project-based learning on academic achievement based on a worldwide higher-education population. The researcher explored the variables that previous meta-analysis studies used to evaluate academic achievements, such as student grade point average (GPA), course grades, and test scores, to explore the use of these variables in project-based learning. There were 17 studies in total included in the meta-analysis evaluating the effect size of academic achievement, which was influenced in moderator variable by subject-matter areas, school location, hours of instruction, technology support, and group size. The researcher …

Addressing Training Gaps: A Competency-Based, Telehealth Training Initiative For Community Health Workers, Laura Porterfield, Victoria Warren, Vanessa Schick, Shannon Gulliot-Wright, Jeff R Temple, Elizabeth M Vaughan

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: To overcome vast variations in Community Health Worker (CHW) training, investigators for the CHW Core Consensus Project (CCCP) derived three types of CHW (Category 1, 2, 3) and established competencies for each category. However, studies are needed that implement these competencies in real-world settings.

OBJECTIVE: Using the six competency domains of the CCCP as a theoretical backbone, we developed and evaluated a training for

METHODS: We developed five telehealth-based, bilingual (Spanish/English) training sessions and implemented them among

RESULTS: All (18/18) CHWs achieved at least 70% on the posttest (mean: 93.7%; range 73.3-100%). Training attendance was 98.9%. Using a six-point …

Lead Cap Use In Interventional Cardiology: Time To Protect Our Head In The Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratory?, Yasar Sattar, Prasanna M Sengodan, Mustafa Sajjad Cheema, Nismat Javed, Shoaib Ashraf, Sadaf Fakhra, Anas Alharbi, Moinuddin Syed, Mahboob Alam, Islam Y Elgendy, Affan Haleem, Akram Kawsara, M Chadi Alraies, Ramesh Daggubati

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Radiation exposure is an occupational hazard for interventional cardiologists and cardiac catheterisation laboratory staff that can manifest with serious long-term health consequences. Personal protective equipment, including lead jackets and glasses, is common, but the use of radiation protective lead caps is inconsistent.

Methods: A systematic review qualitative assessment of five observational studies using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines protocol was performed.

Results: It was concluded that lead caps significantly reduce radiation exposure to the head, even when a ceiling-mounted lead shield was present.

Conclusion: Although newer protective systems are being …

Reevaluating Regional Law Reform Strategies After Dobbs, Jamie Abrams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article studies the triad of 2016 social media campaigns known as “#AskDr.Kasich,” “#askbevinaboutmyvag,” and “#PeriodsforPence.” While these campaigns, each located in the regional mid-South, were motivated by restrictive state abortion bills, they uniquely positioned menstruation and women’s bodies at the center of their activism—not abortion alone. They leveraged, as a political fault line, the contradiction of these states’ governors’ perceived disgust relating to basic women’s reproductive health, relative to their patriarchal assuredness in regulating and controlling women’s bodies.

In so doing, they tapped into meaningful disruptions in the geographies, religiosities, and masculinities of abortion politics. These campaigns achieved regional …

Navajo Statehood: From Domestic Dependent Nation To 51st State, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Supreme Court’s recent holding in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta that “Indian country is part of the State, not separate from the State” is a reminder of tribal sovereignty’s precarious foundation under U.S. law. The Court’s holding not only broke with longstanding precedent regarding the relationship between tribes and states, but it is also incompatible with the lived experience of those living in the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation, not the states and not the federal government, has primary responsibility for governing an area roughly the size of West Virginia. Yet most maps of the United States demarcate only state boundaries, …

Misinformation Containment Using Nlp And Machine Learning: Why The Problem Is Still Unsolved, Vishnu S. Pendyala

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Despite the increased attention and substantial research into it claiming outstanding successes, the problem of misinformation containment has only been growing in the recent years with not many signs of respite. Misinformation is rapidly changing its latent characteristics and spreading vigorously in a multi-modal fashion, sometimes in a more damaging manner than viruses and other malicious programs on the internet. This chapter examines the existing research in natural language processing and machine learning to stop the spread of misinformation, analyzes why the research has not been practical enough to be incorporated into social media platforms, and provides future research directions. …

A Case Study Of Professional Musicians And Their Perceptions Of The Impact Of Aural Learning Experiences In Developing Musicianship, Jonathan Urmenita

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This narrative case study examines the perceptions of three professional musicians on the impact of focused aural experiences (FAEs) in developing their musicianship. The participants include a professional instrumental performer, the director of a non-profit jazz school, and a retired high school band teacher. Each participant has engaged in performing, teaching, composing, arranging, and/or conducting in some capacity at various stages of their careers. The research explores the roles that focused aural experiences may have had in shaping each individual’s musical development by examining their perceptions of the impacts of such experiences on their overall musicianship. Focused aural experiences (FAEs) …

Natural Language Processing In Lakhota, Jackson Ruedebusch

Honors

With the original intent to develop a translation tool between Lakota, an indigenous language spoken primarily in the upper great plains, and English, my project was ultimately unsuccessful due to a number of challenges. Hopefully however the lessons learned from this attempt will be valuable to future research and development of language technology for the Lakhota language.

Mining Health Informatics Job Advertisements: Insights For Higher Education Programs And Job Seekers, Ahmed El Noshokaty, Mohammad A. Al-Ramahi, Omar El-Gayar, Abdullah Wahbeh, Tareq Nasralah

Computer Information Systems Faculty Publications (Archived)

This paper used web scraping and data mining to analyze 831 health informatics job advertisements on indeed.com. Results showed that 87% of jobs explicitly required a college degree in a related field, 41% of jobs preferred a graduate degree, while 29% preferred or required professional certification. The analysis showed that preferred skills were analytics problem solving, communication skills, oral communication, interpersonal skills, project management, statistics, and critical thinking. The analysis also showed that college degrees, certifications, and the above-mentioned skill set are in high demand for working in the field of health informatics, especially in states with large populations and …

Advancement Via Individual Determination And Its Impact On The Academic Achievement Of African American Male Students, Christerpher L. Turner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program and its impact on the academic achievement of African American and White male students. A causal-comparative quantitative design was used as the methodology for this study. For this study, the academic achievement of AVID and non-AVID African American and White male students was measured by comparing their Algebra 1 scores. The sample included data from approximately 550 African American and White male high school students in a suburban school district in Texas. Student achievement data were collected and analyzed using a statistical …

Perceptions Of Organizational Politics And Interpersonal Relationships In Black Women's Organizations And Sororities, Mitzi S. Willis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although much research has addressed the relationships between leaders and followers, none has focused on these relationships between Black women—specifically, in the context of Black women’s social service organizations and sororities—and the impact the leader’s chosen style of leadership has on the followers’ use of voice. Self silencing is a prominent response to the power dynamic in many leader–follower relationships. The purpose of this study was to describe the interactions between leaders and followers in Black women’s social service organizations and sororities and identify the influence leadership style has on follower engagement. This study extends the application of silencing the …

Gender Inclusivity In Italian: Can Gender Neutrality Be Reached In A Gendered Language? Difficulties, Proposals And Public Perception Of The Phenomenon, Gaia Prunotto

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Italian is a gendered language in which reference to grammatical gender has been constant and inevitable. As language reflects and shapes society, grammatical gender reinforces binary views of social gender and the invizibilization of non-binary identities. Movements for social justice have inspired gender-fair linguistic innovations, such as the feminization of job titles and gender-neutral markers, to promote gender equity and challenge hierarchies of power and dominance in society. This research aimed to explore gender-neutral forms in the Italian grammatical system and public perceptions of these innovations through two studies with two groups of participants.

The first group of participants (n=27) …

Intercultural Competence In The Esl Classroom: Challenges And Successes, Breno Santos Rodrigues Pereira

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This action-based research study investigated the challenges and successes involved in the teaching of intercultural competence in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom. Most studies on intercultural competence take place in English as a foreign language classroom, and very few are centered on ESL instruction. It is this gap in the research that motivated the present study, in which the following research questions were posed: 1) How do targeted training practices in the classroom promote the development of intercultural competence as demonstrated by quantitative data?; 2) What challenges are associated with teaching intercultural competence to ESL learners?; 3) …

Influences On Perceptions Of Students With Disabilities Regarding Services And Supports Rendered At Their Collegiate Institution, Taylor Leanne Mikalik

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Over the past several generations numerous policies and laws have been established that have allowed people with disabilities to further their education. Students with disabilities enter higher education with varied experiences, which allow for a wide array of perceptions of the services and supports provided on this level. The purpose of this dissertation was to study what these perceptions are and how these perceptions were formed; in hopes to encourage more students with disabilities to self-disclose and access beneficial services in the future. A semi-structured narrative interview was conducted with 8 students willing to self-disclose and who received services and …

The Everyday Work-Lives Of Public Librarians In A Diverse Us City, Mariam Jalalifard

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation is situated within the context of the author's personal experience as a librarian of color and educator, exploring the dissonance between the perceived value of their role and their own understanding of its worth. The study aims to bring to light the processes that shape the experiences of female librarians, particularly those who are women of color. The research is informed by Institutional Ethnography (IE) and Narrative Analysis, which focus on the everyday lived experiences of people as the research problematic, and progress through layers to uncover how external power structures influence daily life. Five active female and …

“Building The Roots”: A Delphi Study Examining The Aims Of A Multicultural Competency Graduate Course In Sport And Exercise Psychology, Matthew Paul Gonzalez

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Historically, opportunities to develop cultural competency in sport and exercise psychology graduate programs have been limited (Lee, 2015). Recently, major sport psychology organizations across the world have started to require cultural competency in their credentialing requirements. While this represents progress, these requirements can be met with a single course, which falls below the ideal of integrated cultural competency education (Martens et al., 2000). The present study investigated how to maximize the quality of a single course by coming to agreement on a proposed set of impactful and feasible learning outcomes and assessments in that proposed single course related to cultural …

Epistemological Insecurity In The Anthropocene, Dustin Purvis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation analyzes how increased mainstream awareness of climate change and other complex environmental phenomena transforms some of the basic tools we use to understand the world, including notions of agency, evidence, and causality. More specifically, this project highlights numerous contemporary literary and cultural narratives that formally and thematically depict impromptu systems of action and comprehension developed by humans confronting the unique forms of information overload that result from damaged and rapidly changing environments. Following critics like Ulrich Beck, Rob Nixon, and Stacy Alaimo, I suggest our current era of ecological instability and destructive environmental practices dictate what I refer …

Organizing (Eternal) Identity And Identification: An Upward Glance Into Religious Institutions, Casey M. Stratton

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation disrupts at least two religious spaces: First, scholars religiously adhering to (social) scientific norms, and second, people identifying with religious organizations (i.e., churches). First, we begin constructing a theoretical lens using poststructural ideas offered by Foucault, Derrida, and Bakhtin to read and disrupt (religious) discourse. Second, we complicate organizational identification as a concept, deeming it fixed and fluid—a paradox within religious discourses that endorse Truth and Perfection. Here, we draw from the communication constitutes organization (CCO) approach. Third, we further curate the lens by applying poststructuralism, identification, and CCO in a specific context: The Church of Jesus Christ …

A Longitudinal Study Of Factors That Affect User Interactions With Social Media And Email Spam, Wojciech M. Mazurek

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Given the rapid growth of social media and the increasing prevalence of spam, it is crucial to understand users’ interactions with unsolicited content to develop effective countermeasures against spam. This thesis focuses on exploring the factors that influence users’ decisions to interact with spam on social media and email. It builds upon prior work, which serves as a foundation for further research and conducting a longitudinal analysis. Our results are based on the analysis of 221 responses collected through an online survey. The survey not only gathered demographic information such as age, gender, and race but also collected data on …

Enabling Cybersecure And Resilient Smart Distribution Grid With Edge Devices, Partha Sarathi Sarker

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The smart distribution grid achieves enhanced efficiency and flexibility through the utilization of advanced communication infrastructure, digital devices, and robust computation and control capabilities. Grid-edge devices including distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar photovoltaics (PV), battery storage systems, and intelligent electric loads like electric vehicles and smart appliances, are contributing to the growth of the smart distribution grid. This evolution is transforming the grid into a multifaceted network of interconnected devices and systems, enabling bidirectional data communication and power flows. However, these new layers of data integration and control in the smart grid introduce vulnerabilities to cyberattacks and accidental failures, …

The Decolonial Imaginary Of Borderlands Shakespeare, Katherine Gillen

All Faculty Scholarship (Archived)

No abstract provided.

Behavioral Consultation In Inclusive Preschool Classrooms, Megan Kunze, Berenice De La Cruz

All Faculty Scholarship (Archived)

The purpose of this report is to describe a behavior consultation model that has been successfully tested in early childhood classrooms. A behavior consultant can assist in a teachers’ use of behavior analytic techniques, which have proven successful in classroom settings when applied. Recommendations for choosing a behavior consultant and successful behavior strategies are presented.