Digital Commons Network^™

Excavating Building C And Plaza A To Discover Ancient Activities At The Ancient Maya Salt Works Of Ch’Ok Ayin, Belize, Alex J. Broussard Jr.

LSU Master's Theses

Ch'ok Ayin is part of over 110 known ancient Maya salt works surveyed in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. The salt works are associated with wooden architecture preserved below the sea floor and submerged due to sea level rise. The purpose of the excavations of Ch'ok Ayin Building C and Plaza A was to determine the function of the space based on recovered material remains.  An eleven meter transect was placed in Building C to extend inside and outside of the building to capture activity areas associated with the building. A 2 x 2-meter excavation was placed north of Building …

Reimagining Musical Improvisation Through Poetic Inspiration: A Creative Practice Investigation, Sean Foran

Imaginings: creative practice and inquiry

This article explores creative practice as research through an innovative approach to musical improvisation and recording that challenges traditional boundaries between music and literature. Working with experienced improvising musicians, this study investigates how poetic texts serve as inspiration and catalysts for new creative processes and musical outcomes. Using a practice-based research framework, the project positions poetry as both creative stimulus and constraint, resulting in a suite of short recorded works. The collaboration with a poet prompts a reconsideration of process, recording, and audience experience, with the final release presenting instrumental music alongside printed poetry, but without spoken narration. The findings …

Velocity: The Shimmer As Methodology, Lola Montgomery

Imaginings: creative practice and inquiry

This article articulates a new methodology, named ‘shimmer’. Shimmer is an embodied, intuitive, temporally irregular, and affectively attuned methodology for creative-practice research. Grounded in feminist philosophy, phenomenology, autotheory, and Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow, shimmer names the state in which corporeal knowing precedes cognition and generates theoretical insight. Drawing from lived episodes of illness, performance, lineage-work, and practice-led research, I argue that shimmer functions as an onto-epistemological mode of inquiry: a somatic process that moves between the imaginary, symbolic, and real to produce conceptual clarity with velocity. Against the masculinised tempo of academic grind, shimmer proposes a cyclical feminist temporality of …

The Ambiguity Of Truth: Exploring Inductive Reasoning And Pedagogy In Creative Practice Through Critical Reflection, Stephen O'Connell

Imaginings: creative practice and inquiry

The creative process inherently utilises critical thinking, reflective practice and problem-solving skills, but students can struggle with the mental effort required to engage in critical thinking. This paper examines this phenomenon through a critical reflection as a case study, utilising the Integrated reflective cycle method to engage both in reflective practice and theory. Through the reflection on in-class experiences, errors in the students’ inductive reasoning and a tendency for them to shortcut mental challenges with experiential heuristics were identified, with students appearing to seek cognitive ease over critical metacognition. This paper then proposes utilising an inductive reasoning-led pedagogy, with a …

Echoes Of Memories Erased: A Reflection On Underscoring Between The Fractures, Nat Texler

Imaginings: creative practice and inquiry

This paper covers a reflective account of creating the underscore for the 2025 production of Between the Fractures, performed at the Butterfly Club in Melbourne, Australia. While the process of creating a mise-en-scéne  for a two hander within a small theatre space involves multilayered praxis of aesthetic inferences (Pavis, 2003) this paper aims to provide an insider’s account into some of the creative processes that resulted in the original underscore. Drawing on an eclectic fusion of practice as research methodology, specifically Linda Candy’s reflection practice variants (Candy, 2021), the research provides insight into the decisions, references (musical and otherwise), …

Spatial Distribution Patterns Of Determinants Of Hypertension In West Java In 2023, Meirina Nur Asih Susanti, Wahyu Septiono

Preventia: The Indonesian Journal of Public Health

Hypertension is a public health issue that is unevenly distributed across regions. The high prevalence in West Java (34.4%) with a large population makes the management of hypertension crucial. Differences in economic and environmental conditions are thought to influence the distribution of hypertension, thus requiring spatial analysis. This study used an ecological approach by analyzing data from districts/cities in West Java in 2023. Secondary data were used to measure hypertension prevalence and to assess socioeconomic and environmental factors. The analysis was conducted using univariate Moran's Index, Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA), and the Spatial Autoregressive Model (SAR). The prevalence …

Assessment Of Health And Medical Students' Awareness, Attitude, And Preventive Practices Toward Monkeypox Outbreak, Haneen Qahtan, Taher M. Al-Fahham, Sameerah Mohammed Saeed

Preventia: The Indonesian Journal of Public Health

Monkeypox is an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus, which is a primarily endemic disease in Western and Central Africa. Monkeypox infections among humans have been on the rise in certain areas of Africa in recent times, leading to its identification as a major health hazard. It is important for medical college students, who will become future healthcare professionals, to actively participate in educating the general population about this illness. Their readiness and capacity to properly handle such health emergencies are strongly influenced by their knowledge, attitudes, and preventive measures regarding newly emerging infectious diseases such as monkeypox. This …

Evaluating Acridones As Novel Therapeutics For Human Babesiosis, Pratap Vydyam, Elizabeth Zhang, Papireddy Kancharla, Rozalia A. Dodean, Jane X. Kelly

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Human babesiosis is an emerging tick-borne disease caused by Babesia parasites, most notably Babesia microti and Babesia duncani in North America and Babesia divergens in Europe. Infections can be severe or persistent or relapse despite treatment, and current therapeutic options remain limited, underscoring the urgent need for new and effective treatment options. Acridone derivatives originally developed as potent antimalarial agents against multiple life cycle stages of the malaria parasites were evaluated for their antibabesial activity using continuous in vitro culture systems of B. duncani and B. divergens. Lead candidates were assessed for selectivity against human cell lines to establish preliminary …

Understanding Adult Patients’ Experiences Of Trauma-Informed Care In Outpatient Healthcare, Jayme Aguero

Dissertations (1934 -)

Trauma is recognized as a universal human experience. Well-established evidence demonstrates the negative impact of trauma on health outcomes. In 2014, following a recommendation from SAMHSA, trauma-informed care (TIC) was implemented across human service sectors, including healthcare. While TIC has been in use for the past decade, adults’ experiences of receiving TIC in outpatient healthcare remain largely unknown. The purposes of this study were (a) to explore and describe how adults’ healthcare experiences aligned with the principles of TIC being implemented in outpatient healthcare settings and (b) to understand the perceived usefulness and meaning of TIC for adult patients. A …

Stories Of Stress: Experiences Of Students In A Second-Degree, Graduate-Level, Prelicensure Nursing Program, Holly L. Nerone

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study documented and analyzed through story, the stress-related lived experiences of students in an accelerated, second-degree, graduate-level, prelicensure nursing program. Stress among nursing students has been associated with enduring negative impacts to personal wellness, future professional practice, and patient outcomes. Accelerated, second-degree prelicensure programs are rapid, rigorous, growing in popularity, and associated with the potential to generate high levels of stress among students. Second-degree prelicensure nursing programs have been underrepresented in existing literature on nursing student stress with little research focused on graduate-level options such as Master Entry in Nursing Practice (MENP) and Direct Entry Master of Science in …

The Echo: April 27, 2026, Taylor University

2025-2026 (Volume 113)

No abstract provided.

Transforming Workers' Compensation Into A Workforce Optimization Strategy, Tina Marie Santos, Kathleen Jancek

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Purpose: The personal, physical, and financial toll of workplace injuries on workers is enormous, with many experiencing isolation and depressive symptoms.

Objective: This quality improvement project aimed to improve the Workers' Compensation (WC) program to enhance workforce retention, productivity, team member well-being and reduce liability.

Approach: The project implemented a structured, iterative process grounded in baseline data to inform and refine process improvement and outcomes. Strategies for improvement included: (1) foster professional well-being through an accommodation model that emphasized belonging and meaningful contributions during recovery; (2) creative and flexible solutions leveraging team members' abilities rather than limitations that aligned with …

Association Between The Combined Herbal Medicines And Risk Of Dental Diseases In Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis: Insight From A Nationwide Database, Chiu-Hui Ling, Wei-Jen Chen, Ying-To Hsu, Hanoch Livneh, Ming-Chi Lu, Tzung-Yi Tsai

Leadership, Learning and Counseling Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background and Objectives:

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are found to have a higher risk of dental diseases. Although herbal medicines (HMs) have long been used to treat various conditions, few studies focus on its impact on dental diseases. In this longitudinal cohort study, we assessed the correlation between HM use and risk of dental diseases in RA groups.

Materials and Methods:

A total of 2359 persons with RA aged 20–80 who were free of dental diseases between 2001 and 2010 were retrospectively enrolled from nationwide register-based data. They were then classified into HMs and non-HMs groups based on whether …

History Of Florence State Teachers College, Susan Kirkman Vaughn

Documents

The story of the History of State Teachers College in Florence, Alabama.

Improving Drought Science Communication And Accessibility, Lindsay Erin Johnson

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Effective drought management depends not only on the accuracy of scientific data, but also on how that information is communicated and understood by diverse audiences. This dissertation examines drought communication through the lens of science communication, with a focus on improving readability, accessibility, understandability, and usability of drought information. Using a manuscript-style format, three studies investigate how drought information is written, delivered, and applied. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview and outline of this dissertation. Chapter 2 evaluates the readability of the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) national narratives over almost 8 years. Results show that these narratives are consistently written …

Making The Case For Spandex: The Nature Of Re-Novicing And The Merging Of Expertise For Former Elementary And High School Teachers Who Move To Teaching At The Middle Level, Elizabeth K. Boyle

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

As an academic coach in a large, Midwestern middle school, I noticed an influx of teachers with years of prior experience at the elementary or high school levels being hired to work with students in grades six through eight. Because they were already veteran teachers, they were not assigned mentorship, yet there were aspects of working in a middle-school setting that effectively “re-noviced” them (Hanuscin et al., 2020).

Knowing that cookie-cutter approaches to professional development and learning often do not meet the needs of adult learners, I sought information that would guide what professional growth opportunities could be provided to …

Impacts Of Supplemental Fat In Finishing Diets On Digestibility, Performance, Carcass Outcomes, Meat Quality And Methane Production Of Feedlot Cattle, Anna Marie Kobza

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Rising costs and fluctuating availability of supplemental fats has led to increased interest in alternative fat sources or feed additives that might improve utilization of supplemental fat in feedlot diets. Two separate experiments were conducted to evaluate alternative strategies to overcome high fat prices. The first experiment was a metabolism study, conducted to evaluate digestion parameters of supplemental fat sources with or without LYSOFORTE Extend. The objectives of this experiment were to evaluate LYSOFORTE Extend in beef finishing diets containing a saturated fat source (tallow) and unsaturated fat source (corn oil). Duodenally and ruminally fistulated steers were fed diets containing …

The Low-Temperature Heat Capacity And Thermodynamic Functions Of Mg3n2, Ca3n2, And Sr3n2, Natalie Parkinson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Alkaline earth nitrides are highly hygroscopic materials used in metal refinement and various synthetic processes. In this work, the low-temperature heat capacities of Mg₃N₂, Ca₃N₂, and Sr₃N₂ were measured for the first time. The Ca₃N₂ sample contained impurities, necessitating corrections to the heat capacity data. The absolute entropies of Mg₃N₂, Ca₃N₂, and Sr₃N₂ at 298.15 K were determined to be 75.1, 114.9, and 188.5 J∙K⁻¹∙mol⁻¹, respectively. Gibbs energies of formation were …

Social Determinants Of Health And Caregiver Mental Health Screening In The Neontal Intensive Care Unit, Chloe Hicks Fisher

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Perinatal mental health conditions affect approximately one in five mothers and one in ten fathers in the United States, and caregivers of newborns admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are at an elevated risk for developing mental health conditions due to the significant stress associated with infant hospitalization. However, not all caregivers complete mental health screenings, raising concern that current protocols may be failing to reach a meaningful subset of this population. Social determinants of health (SDOH) are non-medical factors that influence health outcomes and are known risk factors for mental health conditions in perinatal populations. The present …

Developing A Framework To Improve Phishing Response After Detection, Kevin Umba

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Phishing belongs to the most prevalent attack vectors in the cybersecurity industry. Academia, industry, and government resources offer a wealth of information on the subject. However, insights on phishing techniques and remediations are scattered across those sources. Most governmental and academic literature focuses on user awareness, policy guidelines, or phishing training. This leaves the security practitioners underserved. Furthermore, actionable information for security operations is often unstructured or vendor-specific. The goal of the thesis is to provide a preliminary framework to guide security professionals through indicators of compromise and remediation, using a vendor-neutral approach.

Reliability And Validation Of A Game-Based Assessment Of Upper Limb Movement In Children With Unilateral Cerebral Palsy, Rachel Scheele

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Unilateral cerebral palsy (UCP) is a pediatric movement disorder characterized by motor impairment primarily affecting one side of the body. Clinical assessments of upper limb function are widely used but often lack precision and may be influenced by clinician subjectivity, thus creating a need for objective, reliable, and valid forms of assessment. Mobile health (mHealth) has shown promise in rehabilitation settings, due to its accessibility and user-friendly design. However, validity and reliability of these assessment tools remain largely unknown. MoEvGame was developed to evaluate upper limb motor function. This study evaluated the reliability and validity of MoEvGame in children age …

Applied Data Science Insights Into Grade Eight Math, Physics, And Ap® Physics Exam-Taking Influencing Act Stem Outcomes, Reema Banerjee

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study examined the longitudinal relationships among eighth grade mathematics proficiency, high school physics availability, AP® Physics exam participation, and ACT STEM scores across Wisconsin public school districts. A retrospective, multi-cohort design was used, and two cohorts were tracked from middle school through junior year. Publicly available datasets were analyzed using an applied data science approach in R, incorporating exploratory visualization, univariate and bivariate analyses, and multivariate regression modeling. Results indicated a positive association between eighth-grade mathematics proficiency and ACT STEM outcomes. AP® Physics exam participation emerged as a statistically significant independent predictor of ACT STEM scores after controlling for …

Moral Emotions Within The Habituation Of Virtue, Hannah Starr Grubbs-Oechsle

Dissertations (1934 -)

In this dissertation, I examine how moral emotions feature within the habituation of virtues. I suggest that their primary role within the moral life is epistemic: emotions grant agents perceptual access to evaluative properties in the world. I argue that their perceptual function within habit formation is normatively indispensable. I proceed through five methodological movements. I begin by presenting the three historical accounts of emotion I take as most influential on contemporary Western beliefs about emotion and as most dominant within the philosophy of emotion. To that end, I trace Stoic and Kantian accounts of emotion as representative of the …

Chimes: April 27, 2026, Calvin University

Chimes

Former CPI student exonerated, to attend Knollcrest campus in the fall by Ashley Hamons

Behind the budget cuts made for Dialogue and Chimes by Maya Oeverman

World Languages at Calvin: A look at the last 30 years by Mkenna Wilkinson & Ian Tjoelker

Faculty Senate approves changes to hiring, confessional standards, alignment with Synod by Ashley Hamons & Ian Tjoelker

Calvin cuts acrobatics & tumbling program by Alex DeYoung

Calvin department of visual and performing arts hosts annual Spring Arts Festival by Ava Roush

Foreign Language Experience Effects On L2-Accented Speech Attitudes In College Students, Jordan L. Ellington

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study is to test whether knowledge of a second language in college students can affect perceptions and prejudices towards speakers with foreign accents. The testing was completed through both implicit and explicit attitudinal measures in regard to recorded audio stimuli. The explicit attitudinal testing was performed through participant self reporting of attitudes. Participants were presented with first (L1) or second (L2) language accented English samples and then rated that speaker in terms of various characteristics or traits that represented the speaker's solidarity and status. The implicit testing was performed in an Auditory Implicit Associations Test on …

Fast Hyperspectral And Super-Resolved Mapping Of Lipid Membrane Polarity With Single-Molecule Sensitivity, Elric Dion Pott, Meek Yang, James Ethan Batey, Jole Embree, Bin Dong

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cell membranes display nanoscale heterogeneity in lipid composition and organization that regulates vital biological processes yet remain challenging to resolve with conventional imaging. We introduce spectral phasor single-molecule localization microscopy (SP-SMLM), a hyperspectral and super-resolution method that combines wavefront-like optical filtering with single-molecule imaging for simultaneous spatial and spectral analysis. A lab-built three-channel imager with sine/cosine filters encodes emission spectra of single molecules into the phasor space, enabling high-throughput, high-SNR mapping of membrane polarity at sub-50 nm spatial and 15 s temporal resolutions. Through simulation, we validate that the phasor angle correlates with the spectral mean for single dye molecules. …

Initiatives To Grow New Innovative Talent To Enable Fusion Energy, Peng Zhang, Ranganathan Parthasarathy, Yuqiao Fan, Arnold Lumsdaine, Rinkle Juneja, Yuchen Jiang, Monica Gehrig, Louise Ferris, David Donovan, Firas Akasheh, Olakunle Harrison, Joshua Schlegel, Manish Sharma, Mohammad Habibi, Mohan Rao, Rajni Chahal, Sean Walters, Vola Andrianarijaona

Achieve

The Initiatives to Grow New Innovate Talent to Enable Fusion Energy (IGNITE Fusion Energy) project was launched under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) program. This DOE RENEW-funded project is a multi‑institutional program that aims to build the future fusion workforce through mentoring, curriculum development, and innovation bootcamps. IGNITE brings together six academic institutions (Tennessee Tech University, Tennessee State University, Tuskegee University, Southern Adventist University, Missouri University of Science Technology, and University of Tennessee–Knoxville), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a research and partnership hub, and 11+ private fusion companies for industry input and …

New Beginnings: A Well-Being Program For The New Graduate Nurse, Adriana Rumoro

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Graduate nurses are valuable to an organization because they bring a fresh outlook, enthusiasm, and dedication to providing excellent patient care. It marks a new beginning in their professional development. However, along with these new beginnings, they also face feelings of inadequacy, uncertainty, and workload pressure during the transition from student nurse to registered professional nurse (Asseiri et al., 2025). Transitioning into the workplace presents a variety of stressors for new graduate nurses, who experience both psychological well-being and distress during their first year of practice (Jarde, et al., 2021). Starting a new career can be the best of times, …

Your Workforce Sustainability Kit: Is Debriefing The Underutilized Tool For Safety And Well-Being?, Maggie Runyon, Tara Ryan Kosmas

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Purpose: To pilot a professional development offering providing a comprehensive debriefing model inclusive of quality, safety, and clinician well-being concerns. This is responsive to main gaps identified in recent systematic reviews exploring the evidence for debriefing to support emotional well-being of clinicians.

Theoretical Framework: Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior guides this professional development and evaluation by examining behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, and control beliefs.

Project: This program evaluation explored baseline gaps identified by 17 nurses who attended a comprehensive debriefing workshop in Maryland. Data was collected before the workshop to assess baseline exposure to debriefing behaviors and practice norms. The …

Reducing College Dropout Rates Of People With Autism In Hillsborough County, Florida, Jennifer Warren

Selected Social Change Portfolios in Prevention, Intervention, and Consultation

Goal Statement

Significant barriers exist for neurodivergent individuals when they try to access higher education and these barriers continue to disrupt their ability to persist and obtain a college degree or secondary professional education. By implementing targeted academic supports and increasing authentic inclusive education practices on campuses and in online education spaces, barriers can be reduced or eliminated. With clear actionable steps and intentional buy in from institutions, barriers present for teens and young adults with autism are removed and higher education.

Significant Findings

College students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are a growing population in higher education, but they …