Digital Commons Network^™

Raising Awareness Of Senior Transportation Services In Monterey County, Daisy Prado

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Transportation barriers limit access to vital health and social services, especially for older adults. This capstone at Independent Transportation Network Monterey County (ITNMC) in Salinas focused on supporting older adults and those with visual impairments through volunteer-based rides, enabling independence and well-being. The project aimed to increase ITN awareness by sharing volunteer and rider stories on social media, building connections, and encouraging involvement. Social media presence grew, though limited time and structure hindered full implementation. Still, the foundation built is worth continuing to build. Intentional outreach can make a difference. With stronger planning, community support, and sustained effort, ITN can …

Attendance, Engagement, And Community Building: Supporting Unhoused 6th Grade Girls Through Leadership Program, Efren A. Duarte

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Unhoused youth experience higher rates of chronic absenteeism, heightened by lack of support and student engagement. The project objective was to improve school attendance in the participants and see a positive shift in student engagement. This took place at the Family Resource Center at Sherwood Elementary in Salinas, California. The participants involved in the program were 19 6th-grade girls, with 13 of those being youth facing some form of housing insecurity issue. The program consisted of 9 sessions teaching leadership skills as well as allowing students to work as a team and share their experiences with other unhoused students. The …

Community-Based Substance Use Prevention Handbook, Rachael M. Kupper

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

In Santa Cruz County, too many youth have issues with substance use and abuse. These issues extend beyond Santa Cruz County, but the county exhibits trends similar to those observed nationwide. Community members face challenges related to knowledge and the ability to organize effectively. The YEAH unit (Youth Empowerment Action for Health) and CPP (Community Prevention Partners) are working to address youth substance use, but need help from community members in the smaller jurisdictions across the county. This requires building workgroups across the county, composed of community members, parents, and professionals. The project is a roadmap handbook for forming a …

The Impact Of Art Integration On The Cognitive Development And Creativity Of K-8 Students, Logan Pierson

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The integration of the arts into education has a beneficial effect on K-8 students’ cognitive development and creativity. However, there is a lack of recognition of art in schools because there is no standardized way to test if students are learning from the information being taught. The focus of my project is to find what art is being taught currently in classrooms for K-8 students and how teachers know they are impacting their students. If teachers are using an art-related curriculum in their core subjects, how are they integrating it, and why is it not as popular compared to other …

Supporting Stress Management In First-Year College Students, Maria Cardenas Martinez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Many students entering college lack the coping and emotional regulation skills needed to manage college life effectively. By understanding stress, learning effective coping,  and using emotional regulation strategies, students can maintain positive mental health, adapt to new situations, and succeed academically and personally. However, without these skills, they may experience emotional dysregulation, anxiety, depression, be overwhelmed, and have concentration problems that can negatively affect their well-being and college success. Therefore, I created a one-day workshop for first-year seminar students at California State University, Monterey Bay, in Seaside, California.

Enhancing Emotional Regulation With Breathing Exercises And Body Movement, Katheryn Sani

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Some young elementary school children have not yet developed skills in responding appropriately to their feelings. Without proper emotional awareness and regulation skills, children may struggle with conflict management, peer relationships, and classroom behavior. By learning to recognize their own emotions and triggers, emotional meltdowns can be redirected, and disruptions in the classroom environment can be reduced. In order to address this issue, I have created a two-day lesson for second-grade students at Olson Elementary in Marina, California.

Addressing College Students Stress Through Coping Strategies, Daisy Valdez Martinez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

College students often experience stress due to time management, responsibilities, and finances. This stress can negatively impact them by leading to mental health issues and affecting their academic performance. This capstone focuses on creating a plan in which students are able to handle stressful situations and have greater awareness of stress. The workshop taught students about common stress factors, the impact they have on students, how to manage negative thoughts, and coping strategies. Participants completed activities such as creating their own stress bubbles, a negative and helpful thought worksheet, and a Kahoot quiz on coping skills. Results showed that students …

Raising Regulated Moms: Reducing Reactive Parenting Responses, Victoria J. Perez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Many parents and caregivers lack access to information and support that accurately relates effective parenting styles, without this knowledge caregivers and parents may unintentionally rely on reactive responses that end up escalating conflict with their child rather than resolving it. When parents respond to their child's big emotions without effective tools to first regulate themselves, they risk contributing to higher stress levels, emotional withdrawal, and behavioral dysregulation in their children. Research consistently demonstrates that when parents are given the tools to successfully incorporate self-regulation skills and evidence-based approaches to guide children through difficult emotions, both the child and the parent …

Healing Words: A Resilience Memoir By The Watsonville Women, Teresa L. Munoz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Women in Watsonville face preventable health risks exacerbated by limited access to consistent physical activity and holistic wellness practices. This capstone project was conducted in collaboration with a local non-profit organization, Growing Greatness, that provides wellness-focused programming in organized group activities. This program serves Watsonville families and primarily supports women from underserved communities who are at greater risk of chronic health conditions due to socioeconomic and environmental factors. This project developed a memoir that documents the participants' experiences in activities such as bike riding, camping trips, and retreats that include yoga, hiking, tai-chi, meditation and other restorative activities. The purpose …

Expanding Nature Access For Underserved Communities, Natalie Garcia

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Too few children in Soledad have regular access and connection to outdoor spaces, leading to increased stress and fewer opportunities for positive mental health outcomes. This capstone project was implemented at Ventana Wildlife Society through the Nature Coach Pilot Program, promoting mental health through individualized outdoor plans throughout Monterey County. The program primarily serves underserved communities with limited access to local parks and outdoor resources, while also being open to the general public. The purpose of this project was to support the implementation of the Nature Coach Pilot Program by increasing awareness of accessible green spaces and encouraging engagement in …

Supporting Wellness At Pantries: Enhancing Nutritional Literacy And Healthy Food Choices, Veronica M. Martinez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

High living costs and limited access to funds contribute significantly to food insecurity among families in Santa Cruz County, where many residents spend over 60% of their income on rent. This project addressed the critical need for increased nutritional literacy and knowledge to give participants food choices to help prevent chronic health risks. The purpose of this internship project was to develop educational resources and knowledge to empower community members to make healthier food choices despite systemic financial barriers. The project was implemented in collaboration with local stakeholders (Pajaro Valley Unified School District), including the Second Harvest Food Bank Santa …

Rompiendo El Silencio: Overcoming Emotional Suppression And Embracing Vulnerability In The Latine Community, Destiny Jimenez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project focuses on hosting and facilitating a free, Spanish-speaking support group for Latine individuals in Monterey County with the goal of creating a safe space for open conversation. The project aims to bring people together, encourage discussion around shared experiences, and provide emotional support in a culturally understanding environment. Overall, the event aimed to establish a starting point, an entry into an ongoing process of reflection, connection, and healing, while also helping individuals feel heard, supported, and more connected to their community.

Building The Bridge: A Trauma Informed Supportive Presentation For Parents & Caregivers Of Adolescent Children Who’Ve Experienced Trauma, Cynthia Rodriguez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Children exposed to trauma often face significant adverse effects on their development and well-being when parents/caregivers lack emotional support to their children. The purpose of this capstone project was to develop and implement a psychoeducational presentation designed to teach parents the basics of trauma-informed care principles and practical strategies to help support their children who have experienced trauma. A virtual live presentation approach, including educational evidence-based, trauma-informed curriculum to a set of participants who identify themselves as caregivers or parents. The presentation was evaluated by personal interviews to determine if the participant was satisfied  and would benefit from the presentation. …

Detection Of Changes In Short Narratives, Presley Priddy

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Narrativity and object association have been extensively researched in the past to determine how changes in a text impact reader interpretation. In this research, we attempted to establish a relationship between the relation of an object to a character situated in a particular narrative context and the detection of inconsistencies presented in the given story. Participants read texts that either associated or dissociated an object with a character, within a high or low-narrative context. Reading times were measured on critical sentences that were inconsistent with the placement of previously dissociated objects. When presented with object inconsistencies in highly narrative stories, …

Autonomous Deficiency Detection And Vision-Language Summarization For Underground Infrastructure On Embedded Edge Systems, Johny Lopez

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Aging underground infrastructure poses significant risks to public health and environmental safety, yet structural condition assessment remains bottlenecked by labor-intensive manual CCTV inspections. This thesis proposes a comprehensive algorithmic framework enabling fully autonomous, real-time deficiency detection, geometric assessment, and natural language reporting on resource- constrained edge computing platforms. Three core components address this challenge. First, RAPID-SCAN, a novel semantic segmentation architecture utilizing a Dynamic Feature Pyramid Network and Channel-Spatial Attention, achieves real-time, pixel-precise defect localization with dramatically reduced parameters. Second, an Edge-Optimized Vision-Language Model pipeline employing LoRA and 4-bit QLoRA quantization compresses Phi-3.5 for local deployment, en- abling autonomous technical …

Unveiling Embodied White Supremacy: Therapists’ Experiences And Its Imprint On Therapeutic Relationships In Dance/Movement Therapy, Melody E. Gamba

Counseling and Psychology Dissertations

This qualitative, arts-informed research study explored how White-identifying dance/movement therapists experience and articulate their awareness of embodied White supremacy within therapeutic relationships. Grounded in critical race theory, relational-cultural theory, and embodied critical transformation theory, the study addressed a gap in dance/movement therapy literature concerning how White supremacy is not only cognitively understood, but also somatically felt, relationally enacted, and professionally navigated. The purpose of the study was to understand how White-identifying dance/movement therapists perceive, kinesthetically experience, and make meaning of embodied White supremacy in therapeutic practice, and to explore how these embodied experiences influence therapeutic presence, attunement, and the potential …

Religious Ramifications: An Analysis Of Ancient Religious Mythologies And Their Effects On Societal Gender Roles, Christina E. Burkhalter

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Undergraduate Honors Theses

An analysis of the effect of ancient religious writings in the Mediterranean on local gender culture with a specific focus on the texts deities.

A Room Of One’S Own: Understanding Feminism In A Dance Theatre Context, Eden A. Wilson

Theatre Undergraduate Honors Theses

This creative thesis project examines how the elements of dance theatre can be applied to existing literature. Through process-based research, I explore how movement can physicalize the feminist concepts of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own surrounding the financial and creative constraints of female expression. This project aims to prove the effectiveness of the body as a source of feminist exploration through creating a new lens of interpretation of Woolf’s literature.

From Data Digitization To Personalized Care: Deep Learning And Decision Analytics In Healthcare Systems, Ahla Ko

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces a progression from foundational data infrastructure to individualized clinical decision-making, developing and evaluating three computational frameworks that advance healthcare efficiency and personalization through deep learning and decision analytics. The first study presents an end-to-end pipeline for automated recognition of handwritten medical forms, addressing persistent challenges in health data digitization. Integrating a YOLO-based field detection model, a Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (CRNN) for text transcription, and a confidence-based human-in-the-loop quality assurance framework, the system achieved 99.75\% Exact Match Accuracy and a 0.13\% Character Error Rate on medical forms collected from a tuberculosis research project in Moldova. A GPU-accelerated …

Secondary Teachers’ Perceptions On The Wida Framework To Support Academic Literacy In Multilingual Learners, Laura G. Faris

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine teachers’ perceptions of benefits and barriers to using the WIDA Framework to support academic literacy in multilingual learners (MLs).  Content-area teachers of MLs who continue to learn English are teaching academic literacy through complex linguistic structures for students to both comprehend and produce informative textual structures which occur in secondary textual reading and written assessments in the literature and historical content areas. Qualitative methods including reflective journal entries, semi-structured teacher interviews, and classroom observations were used to collect data on teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of using the WIDA Framework to better …

Exploring Alternative Curriculum Implementation In Special Education Settings, Amber R. Wilson

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand teachers’ perceptions of implementing an alternative curriculum in their self-contained special education settings and grade levels, as well as their perceptions of the training and ongoing support provided for its implementation. This study used a case study research design. Findings revealed that the participants experienced several challenges related to training, ongoing support, and curriculum implementation, including issues aligning the alternative curriculum with state standards and assessments. This study is significant because alternative curriculum implementation is under-researched in the United States, and the international literature on this topic is limited.

A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Pre-Service Mathematics Teacher Preparation Approaches In Jamaica And Historical Black Colleges And Universities In The Southeast United States, Sandra Riley-Brown

Dissertations

This qualitative comparative case study embarked on an in-depth exploration and comparison of the approaches to pre-service mathematics teacher preparation programs (PMTPP) in Jamaica and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the Southeast United States (U.S.), employing a cross-cultural lens. The primary objective of the study was to identify and analyze the similarities and differences between the methodologies utilized in PMTPP across these two regions, with a specific focus on how HBCUs addressed the preparation of culturally responsive educators. The research took two distinct phases. The initial phase involved a thorough analysis of documents provided by the participants. This …

Federated Neuromorphic Intelligence: Advancing Robustness, Efficiency, And Continual Adaptation In Edge Environments, Manh V. Nguyen

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how spiking neural networks (SNNs) can improve federated edge intelligence by advancing three interconnected goals: communication efficiency, adversarial robustness, and continual adaptation. As edge computing deployments expand across Internet of Things (IoT), sensing, and privacy-sensitive applications, conventional federated learning approaches built around artificial neural networks (ANNs) face growing limitations in power consumption, bandwidth demand, and resilience to real-world uncertainty. SNNs offer an alternative computational paradigm based on event-driven, sparse, and temporally structured processing that is naturally suited to constrained edge environments. However, their behavior in practical federated settings remains insufficiently understood.

To address this gap, this dissertation …

Exploring Teachers’ Lived Experiences: The Impact Of Wellness On Student Engagement And Behavior In Third-Grade Classrooms, Tiffany L. Jackson

Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study explored teachers' lived experiences implementing student wellness initiatives in the classroom and examined their views on how these initiatives affected student engagement and behavior. In this study, participants had the opportunity to express their views on implementing wellness practices in the classroom and on how these initiatives impacted student engagement and behavior. The research was guided by theoretical frameworks related to wellness, emotional and social intelligence, and relational perspectives. Semi-structured one-on-one interviews were the primary data source, and interview notes will serve as secondary data. This study addressed three research questions: (1) What are teachers' lived …

The Effects Of Ssri Drugs And Gender On Mental Health Views And Medication Adherence, Caroline S. Edmondson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

There is an existing stigma surrounding mental health and related treatment that affects individuals seeking proper care for their mental health concerns. Previous research has failed to sufficiently examine the effects of mental health stigma on medication adherence, particularly in those who are prescribed SSRI medications, as well as gender differences regarding beliefs around mental health. The current research study aimed to explore the differences in mental health stigma between medicated and unmedicated groups as well as between genders. Further exploration is given to whether overall beliefs about mental health predict medication adherence. The Endorsed and Anticipated Stigma Inventory and …

Teaching Math Skills With Textile Arts: Crafting A New Classroom Curriculum, Lily Doebler

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Mathematics teachers utilize many strategies to teach mathematical concepts, such as working examples on a whiteboard, providing notes sheets, and providing time for individual practice of skills. However, math remains an abstract skill to many students, and math performance in the United States continues to decline in public schools. Between 2019 and 2022, 51 of 53 jurisdictions recognized by The Nation’s Report Card showed a decrease in scores on the organization's assessment for eighth grade public school students. In contrast, activities with hands-on elements, as well as those that allow for student choice-making, have been shown to increase student engagement, …

Ai And Statistics: An Examination Of The Capabilities Of Ai Models To Perform Data Science, Erik Rosine

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Artificial intelligence has become one of the fastest growing modern technologies, with publicly available AI chatbots becoming particularly popular since the 2022 launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Due to their seemingly endless applications and unrivalled ease of use, these AI models present a new and often highly efficient method of approaching problems and increasing efficiency. However, with so many marketed models available, it is challenging to know which is the best one to use. This experiment tests five of the most popular AI models at performing data science tasks with given datasets, a common application of AI. These models are OpenAI’s …

The Short Term Water Quality Impacts Of A Low-Head Dam Removal On Urban Stream Water Quality In Central Virginia, Usa: Is It The Dam Or The Urban Environment?, Lorraine L. Upton

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Dam removal in the United States has become a common practice for stream restoration and community safety. Studies have shown removals to restore an ecosystem to its natural flow, but in urban environments, dams can serve as a retention basin that help to mitigate increased amounts of stormwater and high pollution loads from increased percentages of impervious surfaces. A central Virginia watershed located in an urbanized community recently experienced a low-head dam removal and its conversion to a constructed wetland. This study assesses the short-term impacts of the dam removal through water quality sampling based on its chemical, biota, and …

Crispr/Cas-Mediated Genome Editing Of Staphylococcus Aureus For Studying Phage-Pathogenicity Island-Host Interactions, Annalise Williams

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Staphylococcus aureus is a gram-positive cocci that is a common member of our microbiota, living frequently on our skin and in our nasal passages. It is known for its wide variety of clinical manifestations, including endocarditis, scalded skin syndrome, toxic shock syndrome, food poisoning, sepsis, folliculitis, impetigo, and many other infections. It is widely recognized for being acquired in both hospital and community settings and is often resistant to multiple drugs. This poses a major problem, both in the United States and globally, as many treatments are no longer effective. MRSA, or Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus, is one example of the many …

Fellowship Of Christian Athletes (Fca) Social Expansion: An Analysis Of The Fca Brand Architecture, Victoria G. Williamson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes has seen much growth over the past seven decades, after being created in a small town in Oklahoma in 1954 with only 15 members to now having 2,000+ staff and reaching 100+ countries (FCA Timeline, 2024). How did such a small organization with such a specific niche, become the well-known non-profit global ministry it is today? This thesis will discover how the Fellowship of Christian Athletes grew its brand worldwide pre and post-digital media through its marketing and communications methods. For this thesis, research will be done on FCA’s methods for reaching its target audience …