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Rural Black Church Leadership And Community Development In Midwest Illinois, Derrick Smith

Dissertations of Practice

This qualitative study examines the role of a rural Black church in leadership development and community sustainability within a Midwestern Illinois town. While extensive scholarship documents the historical significance of the Black church in civil rights, political mobilization, and social advocacy, limited research explores the founding of contemporary Black churches and the intentional processes through which they develop leaders and support community sustainability in rural or small-town settings. This study addresses that gap by investigating the establishment and evolution of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church (NHMBC) in DeKalb, Illinois, and its impact on leadership development and Black community development.

Guided …

"Where The Grass Is Greener": Youth Participatory Action Research Examining The Lived Student Experience Through Cross-Campus Shadowing, Justin Matthew Antos

Dissertations of Practice

This Youth Participatory Action Research study examined how alumni perceive student experiences related to school culture and climate, classroom learning environments, and equity of opportunity and resources across three sister high schools within a single district. Six alumni, all recent graduates, participated in a three-day, cross-campus shadowing experience, observing classrooms and school environments, and reflecting on key similarities and differences across campuses through focus groups. Findings indicated that climate, engagement, and equity are shaped not only by curriculum, but by the interaction of policies, relationships, physical spaces, and consistency of expectations. Classrooms emphasizing interaction, relevance, and structure fostered higher engagement, …

The Veteran-Student Experience: Exploring Transition Dynamics, Brian A. Berchtold

Dissertations of Practice

Military veteran college students face unique challenges in and outside of the classroom. Few studies have examined how the transitions from military to civilian and higher education affects miliary veteran college students. Using an interpretivist qualitative study design, this study explored how military veteran college students experience their transition to civilian life and to higher education. Data was collected from 9 military veterans using interviews that were coded using thematic analysis. Themes were then reviewed by participants using a focus group. The member checked themes revolved around issues with reframing their military mindset and reacclimating to civilian life, fitting in …

Preparing Students For What Comes Next: A Qualitative Study Of District Approaches To Postsecondary And Career Readiness, Amanda C. Pelsor

Dissertations of Practice

PREPARING STUDENTS FOR WHAT COMES NEXT: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF DISTRICT APPROACHES TO POSTSECONDARY AND CAREER READINESS

This qualitative study examines how Illinois school districts support students’ readiness for postsecondary success and career planning and exploration. Despite longstanding state and federal efforts to improve college and career readiness, many students continue to face challenges after high school, including lack of workforce readiness, underpreparedness for postsecondary education, unclear career pathways, and difficulty navigating complex transitions. Using semi-structured interviews, this study explores how districts conceptualize and implement career readiness frameworks, the ways readiness work is embedded within district systems, and the barriers …

What Do They Expect? Understanding Preservice Teachers' Views On A Social Studies Teaching Methodology Course, Jeanine A. Clark Bremer

Dissertations of Practice

This dissertation examined preservice teachers’ expectations of their social studies methods course. Methods courses serve as a transition point helping preservice teachers to take content knowledge and learn how to use it as an educator. Social studies methods was selected due to its unique position in elementary education. It is a subject area that is no longer a core subject. Despite that, teachers are still expected to provide students with the content knowledge. The expectations matter because of how they influence preservice teachers’ approaches to the course.

As a phenomenological case study, qualitative methods were employed to better understand how …

Walk To Learn Structured Literacy Model: Teacher Perceptions Using The Lippitt-Knoster Model For Managing Complex Change, Blake A. Hand

Dissertations of Practice

Low reading proficiency in urban districts highlights an urgent need for effective instructional systems, but research on the "Walk to Learn" (WTL) model remains sparse. This study addresses the knowledge gap regarding how teachers perceive large-scale school-wide shifts to structured literacy using WTL. The study examined teacher perceptions of implementing a differentiated WTL literacy model using the Lippitt-Knoster framework for managing complex change. This qualitative case study involved interviews with 12 certified educators at an urban elementary school. Data was analyzed using thematic coding to align findings with the components of the change management framework. Teachers perceived the implementation as …

Unh: The Magazine Of The University Of New Hampshire, Winter 2026, Unh Magazine

UNH Magazine

No abstract provided.

Etsu At-A-Glance - 2024-2025, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU At-a-Glance

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Climate Change Education: Wyoming And New Jersey As Effective Models Of Climate Change In Education Standards, Jamie W. Miller

Pitzer Senior Theses

Education is an essential and oft-overlooked part of the conversation about climate change. As I’ll demonstrate in this thesis, education shapes how the public understands climate change and creates environmental knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and intentions. Exploring and understanding climate change education allows us to understand how people form perspectives about climate issues. This topic is extremely important, but one we often gloss over when thinking about climate solutions. I analyzed three case studies of educational standards in the United States to understand how political context, writing focuses, and benchmarks impact the efficacy of climate change standards. My research found that …

Psychosocial Strengths Associated With Higher Functioning After Interpersonal Adversity In The United Kingdom And Ireland, Matthew Brooks, Victoria Banyard, Xiafei Wang, Sherry Hamby

Social Work Faculty Publications

Objective: Over the past two decades, positive psychology research has identified correlates of resilience. Although a range of strengths have been explored, there is a need to identify specific strengths that best support individuals to thrive after interpersonal trauma and adversity. This study assessed the contribution of 24 strengths from the Values in Action (VIA) positive psychology survey, alongside five other measures of strengths identified from resilience research, to identify those that show most promise.

Method: In total, 1,440 adults from the United Kingdom and Ireland completed the online VIA survey, and questions on five psychosocial strengths (ecoconnections, …

Compassionate Care In The Library Workplace, Shannon D. Jones

MUSC Faculty Bookshelf

This chapter explores the role of compassionate care as a critical leadership practice in the library workplace, with a particular focus on academic health sciences libraries. Drawing on the author’s lived experience as a Black woman library leader and on over two decades in the profession, the chapter situates compassionate care at the intersection of compassionate and inclusive leadership and organizational well-being. In the context of ongoing collective trauma, including the COVID-19 pandemic, racial violence, political polarization, and sustained attacks on libraries, the chapter argues that compassion must move beyond empathy to intentional, actionable leadership. It examines how social identities, …

Expanding Access To Urban Nature: Floating Gardens As Equitable And Inclusive Blue-Green Infrastructure In The Chicago River, Michael Hendricks, Alec Foster, Noha Shawki, Mariela Fernandez, Sage Rossman, Sierra Mack-Erb, Eric Peterson

Faculty Publications – Politics and Government

This study examines the social dimensions of Urban Rivers’ Free Kayak Days at the Bubbly Creek Floating Gardens in Chicago, Illinois. Floating gardens are a form of blue-green infrastructure that provide ecological benefits, including nutrient removal, habitat creation, and shoreline stabilization, while also offering recreational and educational opportunities. Guided by environmental justice scholarship, our interdisciplinary team conducted participant observation to evaluate whether Urban Rivers’ Freek Kayak Days effectively engaged residents from surrounding marginalized communities. Four themes emerged: (1) access and inclusion, highlighting reduced financial barriers but ongoing challenges related to safety perceptions, cultural relevance, and physical accessibility; (2) community engagement …

Ai Is Coming For Your Mind: A Case For Consumer Protection, Blithe Ellis

Gateway Reader- Individual Papers

• The Problem: Immersive and anthropomorphic artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots can trigger, amplify, or reshape psychotic experiences—colloquially termed "AI psychosis"—by mirroring user language, validating delusional beliefs, and prioritizing user engagement over safety.

• The Method: The author analyzes peer-reviewed psychiatric literature, media reports from 2025, and user discussions on the r/ChatGPT Reddit forum to advocate for consumer protection regulations.

• Quantitative Finding: The analysis incorporates data from the year 2026, references cases involving a 26-year-old woman, and evaluates a specific Reddit thread featuring hundreds of user stories regarding AI-fueled delusions.

• Qualitative Finding: Shared themes in AI-associated distress include messianic missions, delusions of chatbot …

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Beyond Algorithm Aversion: How Explanation Quality Enables Fairness And Trust In Ai-Based Performance Evaluations, Darren Mcgraw

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Performance evaluation systems increasingly incorporate artificial intelligence, yet employee acceptance remains limited. This experimental study examined how explanation quality and evaluator type influenced fairness perceptions and trust in AI-based performance evaluations among 275 U.S. working adults. Using a 2 × 2 vignette design, results demonstrated that explanation quality produced large effects on perceived fairness (d = 1.79) and trust, while evaluator type—human versus AI—had negligible independent effects (d = −0.08) when explanations were high quality. Fairness mediated the explanation-trust relationship (indirect effect = 1.95, 95% CI [1.65, 2.26]), with inconsistent mediation indicated by a negative direct effect (b = −0.81, …

2026 Commencement Program, Seattle University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Undergraduate Catalog Of Studies, 2025-2026, University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Undergraduate Catalog of Studies

No abstract provided.

Graduate Catalog Of Studies, 2025-2026, University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Graduate School Catalog of Studies

No abstract provided.

Lived Experiences Of Black Girls In The City Of Richmond, Va, Nakeina E. Douglas-Glenn, Yali Pang, Charity Scott, Morgan Woodle, Craig Dearfield, Mariam Ai-Khafaji, T'Niyah Baylor, Faith Holmes, Jin Dorjderem, Rise

Research Institute for Social Equity

The VCU Research Institute for Social Equity (RISE) partnered with Girls For A Change (GFAC), a nonprofit youth development organization, to explore the lived experiences of Black girls in Richmond, Virginia. The report offers a comprehensive understanding of the lives of Black girls by working closely with them and their communities, including their guardians/parents and Black emerging adult women. The voices of Black girls and emerging adult Black women were heard directly through surveys and focus groups, and their parents and guardians provided further insights through interviews. This approach allows us to understand their lived experiences, individual strengths, and community …

Geoscience Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale (Geomses) For Majors-Level Undergraduates: Psychometric Data, Michael Coe, Rory Mcfadden, Beth Pratt-Sitaula, Eric Baer

Science Education Resource Center (SERC)

Self-efficacy is often investigated as a key attitudinal component of academic persistence and performance, and self-efficacy surveys can serve in research models as efficient and non-threatening assessment tools to augment or substitute for achievement or performance measures. The Geoscience Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale (GeoMSES) builds on prior work in measurement of self-efficacy for mathematics by focusing specifically on students’ capacity to apply mathematical skills to typical problems encountered in majors-level undergraduate geoscience courses or in professional geoscience settings. The scale was developed as part of program evaluation research for a set of learning modules designed to augment existing geoscience curricula. In …

Beyond Likes And Reposts: Social Media's Role In Warfare, Britney Arteaga

St. Thomas Law Review

Social media has become a double-edged sword in our current digital era, bringing both serious advantages and disadvantages to the forefront of domestic and international discussions. Social media has become a weapon in political, cultural, and even military conflicts due to the spread of unregulated content, despite it enabling people to interact, share information, and voice their opinions. Social media has facilitated the spread of hate speech, propaganda, and false information, which in turn distorts realities and shapes narratives and opinions. Social media's effect on both a domestic and global scale have been catastrophic, ranging from promoting violence to further …

Platforms, Power, And The Public Square: The Debate On Editorial Rights In The Age Of Social Media, Donovan Smith

St. Thomas Law Review

Social media has taken a hold on society and continues to tighten its grip; its influence is undeniable. Today, billions of people all over the world use social media for news, weather updates, communication, commerce, and self-expression every day. With the increasing dependence on social media, it is essential that the civil liberties and fundamental rights of social media users remain protected. Over the last decade, censorship of users and content on social media has become a key political talking point, especially when coupled with concurring events like elections and global pandemics. But is any of this censorship even allowed? …

The Moral Complacency Of Federal Indian Law, Daniel B. Rice

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

For all its association with historical tragedy, federal Indian law remains thoroughly amoral. The field draws little distinction between horrific and laudable traditions. In sharp contrast with the Court's equality doctrines, Indian law continues to rest on explicit structural subordination. Its core precepts treat acts of historical treachery and cultural annihilation as legally generative in the present. This Article identifies Indian law's moral vacuity as an unexplained and unjustified aberration. It urges the Court to speak and theorize about Indian law in a register befitting the subject's moral gravity.

In recent years, Justice Gorsuch has shown that Indian law's moral …

Exercise Science Bs, Kinesiology, Sport, And Recreation

Program Revisions/Additions

No abstract provided.

The Poly Problem In Zoning: Redefining "Family" For A Changing Society, Aric Short, Tanya Pierce

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Single-family zoning has long dictated not only where people may live but also with whom. Although extensively critiqued for perpetuating racial and economic exclusion, these laws also privilege relationships defined by blood, marriage, or adoption and marginalize nontraditional families. This Article focuses on a particularly overlooked group: polyamorous families who often face legal uncertainty, social exclusion, and housing discrimination due to restrictive zoning definitions of “family.”

As polyamory gains cultural visibility and increasing legal recognition—through West 49th Street, LLC v. O’Neill and municipal reforms in cities like Somerville and Cambridge—now is the time to examine zoning's role in reinforcing outdated …

Waging The Battle For Society's Soul: The Constitutionality Of Juvenile Transfer Legislation In The Wake Of Jones V. Mississippi, Logan Knutson

Minnesota Law Review Vols. 106:2 onward (2021-present)

Trying juvenile defendants as adults is a cruel, yet enduring practice in U.S. criminal law. If convicted, these youthful offenders face brutal conditions in adult prison and a lifelong stigma. Although these devastating consequences of conviction are readily apparent, juvenile transfer is insidious even absent a prison sentence or criminal record.

State-level legislation that mandates or creates a presumption for subjecting juveniles to any degree of proceedings in adult court disregards their unique capacity for rehabilitation—a characteristic of youth that both modern neuroscience and the U.S. Supreme Court have recognized for decades. In the context of sentencing juveniles to life …

Equity In Place, Segregation, And The Phillips Neighborhood, Myron W. Orfield

Articles

This Article describes an existential legal and factual conflict about residential segregation. It is centered in a neighborhood a few blocks north of where George Floyd—and more recently Renee Good—were murdered. Five years before Floyd’s murder, the conflict reached a breaking point, resulting in three lawsuits. One involved federal civil rights and two involved state civil rights claims that housing policy was causing deeper residential and educational segregation. Much of this debate was summarized in a series of articles in the journal Housing Policy Debate before the lawsuits were filed.

On one side were proponents of greater residential and educational …

Possible Reconsideration To The Library Of Congress Classification System’S Liberal Placements Of African American Psychology And African American Social Science, Eddie Hughes

Southern University and A&M College: John B. Cade Library Publications

The Library of Congress Classification (LCC), developed by Herbert Putnam in 1897, remains the predominant system for organizing materials in U.S. academic libraries. By integrating innovations with earlier classification systems by Charles Cutter and Melvil Dewey, the LCC divides human knowledge into 21 classes, each represented by alphabetic codes. While Psychology is classified under BF and social sciences under HQ, materials on African American Psychology and African American Social Science are primarily cataloged under Class E—History of America—specifically E185.625 and E185.86. This placement raises critical questions about the appropriateness of categorizing these subjects as historical rather than disciplinary. Given African …

Neuroaesthetic Frequency Tuning For Neurodivergent Populations: A Network-Informed Theory Of Music For Emotional Memory And Cognitive Regulation, Piper Hutson, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Neuroaesthetic frequency tuning posits that deliberate selection of musical parameters can modulate large-scale neural systems to support emotional memory retrieval and cognitive regulation in neurodivergent populations. Drawing on contemporary evidence from network neuroscience, cognitive musicology, and affective science, the article synthesizes how rhythmic, harmonic, and lyrical structures align with Default Mode (DM), fronto-parietal control, salience, motor, and limbic systems, and how these alignments can be targeted to balance internally oriented mentation with task engagement. The theory further integrates autonomic and cellular mechanisms, describing how tempo and spectral energy shift arousal and heart rate variability, and how astrocytic ensembles contribute to …

Children Past Curfew: Surveillance, Resistance, And Childhood In Philippine Martial Law Children's Literature, Krisna Marie T. Balolong

Children's Literature (MA) Theses

This paper examines how two Philippine children's books depict state surveillance and its effects on a child's perspective of family, authority figures, and childhood. Through analysis of Augie Rivera's Isang Harding Papel and Sandra Nicole Roldan's At the School Gate, this project makes a connection between children's literature and surveillance studies, offering new framework to engage with children’s literature depicting authoritarian regimes and state violence, especially in cases where children were targets of their governments. Each book is examined by their representations of state surveillance during the Martial Law era of the Philippines, as well as each characters’ individual …

Is Seeing Still Believing? Comparing Deepfake Regulations In The U.S. And E.U., Sara Weitz

Emory International Law Review

The rapid advancement of deepfake technology has fundamentally altered the trustworthiness of audio and visual media. Deepfakes, synthetic media generated through artificial intelligence, can skew political discourse, manipulate elections, and disproportionately harm women through nonconsensual deepfake pornography. As these issues intensify, the law must provide adequate protections without stifling innovation and infringing on fundamental rights. This requires a careful balancing act.

This comment compares the emerging regulatory frameworks governing deepfakes and artificial intelligence in the United States and European Union. In the United States, constitutional constraints limit federal regulation, resulting in a fragmented patchwork of laws at the state level. …