Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Partisan Group-Based Emotions On Immigration Attitudes, Samantha Michelle Wiener

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

This dissertation utilized a cognitive appraisal theory of emotion perspective to study the role of partisan group-based emotion in immigration attitude formation to better understand partisan immigration attitudes and preferences in the United States. Across one correlational and two experimental studies, this research showed that partisan group-based emotions predicted immigration attitudes significantly distinctly than do individual-level emotions. The first and third papers showed that group-based emotions predicted immigration attitudes. The second highlighted the role that individual-level empathy plays in immigration preferences. Taken together, to more fully understand how Americans form attitudes towards immigrants and immigration, researchers must account for both …

Collecting Meaning: A Study On Collecting As An Artmaking Practice, Johanna Young

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how we practice creativity and construct narratives through the act of building collections. It examines collecting as both an innate creative impulse and a learned process. Using arts-based research and narrative inquiry, the study considers how our collecting habits reflect the ways we process information and express personal artistic interests. Drawing from personal experiences, this thesis mines the idea of the subconscious through the artistic lens of collecting.

1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, ..., Annemarie Torresen

Masters Theses

1

I invite you to see it and feel it and sit in it and breathe it in and

hold it in your lap. Art isn’t too scary, and neither is math.

2

bouncing between bounds of a binary

bippity boppity! let’s break brains and bread

balance or belly flop, what’s mine is yours:

bumptious and bumbling and barely able

i offer it broken and let you like it that way

Numb., Anna Rapson

Masters Theses

Social media platforms, from their conception, posed a break in the lived experience of the average human being’s day to day routines. Although access to information has always been shaped by portals into other lived realities—through photojournalism, print legacy media, news broadcasts both on radio and television—social media has posited a novel phenomenological architecture where borders between embodied reality and perception of lived experience are simultaneously blurred and reinforced. This morphed duality of consciousness positions the body and mind in tension, deconstructing pre-social media conceptions of the ontology of lived experience. In a digital world shaped by limitless input by …

Finding A Way Out Of The Filter Bubble: The Confusion Of A Heavy Social Media User, Longwen Miao

Masters Theses

This thesis studies how algorithmic recommendation systems reshape visual perception, aesthetic judgment, and the construction of selfhood within contemporary digital culture.

Everything begins with the experience of repeatedly encountering algorithmically recommended content on everyday digital platforms. On these platforms, images, sounds, and social interactions are continuously selected, repeated, and reorganized by predictive systems, forming an environment in which perception is constantly structured and adjusted.

From this observation, the research raises two central questions: how do algorithmic recommendation systems reshape visual perception, aesthetic judgment, and self-recognition, and how might these systems be intervened in or made perceptible through artistic practice? Within …

Always More To Explore: Play And Resilience In Community-Based Artmaking, Charlotte T. Faubert

Masters Theses

The following research investigates the ways in which material exploration in community-based artmaking spaces fosters learning through play and creative resilience. Using teacher-based action research, three visual arts workshops were designed, conducted, and reviewed in order to understand how community-based teaching strategies that center material exploration impact these two components of social emotional growth in elementary-aged art students. The conclusions drawn from this research indicate that material exploration, learning through play, and creative resilience are elements within community-based artmaking that form an ecosystem of learning, with all three phenomena feeding off of one another in a non-linear capacity. Additionally, it …

What Teachers See: Collaborative Artmaking In Chinese And U.S. Elementary Schools, Jiayu Shi

Masters Theses

This study explores how elementary art teachers in the United States and China perceive and use collaborative artmaking with their students. Driven by my personal journey as a Chinese student and art educator now studying in the U.S., this research asks: How do teachers in these two countries compare in their views of collaborative artmaking, including its social-emotional outcomes, benefits, and challenges. I conducted semi structured interviews with three elementary art teachers: two from China (one veteran, one early-career) and one from the U.S. with experience in both rural and urban schools. Findings show that teachers in both contexts value …

Improving Competency Of Care At End Of Life, Linda J. Perez

Group: Northern Arizona University School of Nursing, DNP Doctoral Papers

Providing competent care at the end of life (EOL) has been recognized as an essential skill for nursing students transitioning to practice (NSTP). EOL has been defined as the phase in which patients enter the terminal stage of a chronic illness or experience an unexpected health decline that ultimately results in death (Hughes et al., 2024). Due to limited EOL education provided in nursing schools, many NSTP have experienced significant anxiety, which has contributed to decreased self-efficacy and reduced competency when caring for patients at EOL (Jablonski et al., 2020). EOL discussions are often not had or minimally discussed due …

Confidence And Self-Efficacy Improvement In Medication Administration Using Simulation-Based Strategies With Nursing Students, Nilda Lopez

Group: Samford University Moffett & Sanders School of Nursing

This project evaluated the effectiveness of simulation-based learning in improving nursing students’ confidence and self-efficacy in medication administration.

Bandura’s self-efficacy theory guided the design, emphasizing mastery experiences, feedback, and emotional regulation (Bandura, 1977). Lewin’s change theory provided a structured framework for implementation and sustainability through unfreezing, change, and refreezing processes, supporting both student learning and faculty adoption.

This quality improvement project was conducted over one semester with practical nursing students. Structured simulations included standardized prebriefing, guided scenarios, and debriefing. Faculty observations and student reflections were used to assess changes in confidence, self-efficacy, and clinical judgment.

Critical Connections: An Evaluation And Envisioning Of Partnership Between Art Museums, Schools, & Central Offices, Bennett R. Portillo

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates systemic impediments to implementing partnerships between schools, art museums, and school districts’ central offices. This research suggests cross-sector connection and worker solidarity as strategies for resisting extremists efforts to de-coordinate the U.S. education system. Research methods include a review of existing literature and interviews with practitioners for the purpose of identifying shared values, challenges, and misconceptions in partnerships. From an anti-deficit perspective, the data analysis critically evaluates educational non-profits’ corporate values and re-centers practitioners' interpersonal investments.

What A Wonderful Dream, Zhaoyue Chen

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between childhood memory, cuteness, fantasy, and psychological tension through ceramic sculpture and installation. Drawing from amusement imagery, toys, consumer objects, animal forms, and decorative environments, my work investigates how cuteness can function as an emotional and visual surface rather than simply representing innocence. While these forms often appear soft, playful, and comforting, they can also evoke feelings of restraint, instability, vulnerability, and discomfort.

The title What a Wonderful Dream was inspired by a visit to a Winnie the Pooh ride at Disneyland with my close friend and her eleven-month-old baby girl. That experience led me …

Domestic Travelers: Transparent Machines, Hollow Bodies, Hanyi Wang

Masters Theses

Digitization is not a modern invention. Derived from the concept of fingers, this mindset of packing information into quantifiable, interchangeable units sounds mechanical, yet eerily physical. Try to imagine: a ghostly hand with millions of fingers with the same length, likeness, and function. Under the worldview of Digital Narrative, we live in a digital simulation: everything is representable with quantifiable units, fluid across media. Yet under this spectacle of convenient abundance, something is missing. The Unknowables are replaced with arbitrary symbols, while the Uncategorizables are omitted. This is a framework that cannot accommodate human subtleties and complexities. One needs to …

Until The Ground Breaks, Annie Hu

Masters Theses

Until the Ground Breaks explores the complex relationship between personal memory, embodied experience, and internalized "archival logic." By examining long-term cross-cultural diasporic experiences and the shifting dynamics of family narratives—including the sensory experiences and fading memory of a grandmother, a father's correspondence that acts as a textual record of emotional logic, and the continuous revision of family history—this thesis dissects the psychological tremors that occur when the illusion of a singular, stable memory archive collapses. This research rejects the view of memory as a static container of truth, revealing it instead as a dynamic, unstable, and constantly rewritten living system. …

41.82379°N, 71.38497°W, Xiaotong Cai

Masters Theses

I, Xiaotong Cai, have known an abandoned bridge was lifted and stuck at 64-degree from 1976. I have walked and bent down towards it for over 60 times, each paralleling a journal entry. The visits and 27,351 words (up until May 5th) are the living proof: observation, encounters, correspondence, collectively and personally. It’s been nine months since it emerged in flux. Two flesh. A moving outsider and a still bridge. How can an Unused giant activate a human body? Who is the attractor and intervener?

Here, my solution is to conduct a series of small gestures. I say, interpreting without …

Slouching Towards Inefficiency? The Cardiometabolic And Cognitive Costs Of Poor Posture, Ava Mae Fitzenrider

Honors Projects

Posture affects all of our lives. It is both static and dynamic, adapting continuously to environmental demands. One postural alteration frequently observed in occupational settings is hyperkyphosis, which can be induced by sitting position. During computer use, individuals commonly adopt a slouched posture, which can exacerbate hyperkyphosis, and contribute to dis-ease within the body. Previous research has demonstrated that such postural deviations can negatively affect pulmonary function, as well as other bodily functions. Despite these findings, the effects of acute hyperkyphosis (“slouching”) on cardiometabolic function and cognition remain largely unexplored. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the …

2026 Ursinus College Commencement Progam, Ursinus College

Ursinus College Commencement Programs

This Ursinus College Commencement program from 2026 contains the list of speakers, honors, awards and order of events for the day.

Advancing School-Based Sexual Reproductive Health Education Through A Fifth-Grade Educator Toolkit, Emira Romero

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Background: Although sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education is a critical component of early health literacy and health promotion, educators remain underprepared to deliver this education. Local Problem: A gap analysis conducted at School A, a public elementary school in the San Francisco Bay Area, revealed the absence of a SRH curriculum for their fifth graders. Methods: A Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) student-led quality improvement project to introduce a SRH educator toolkit to increase educator confidence and self-efficacy was conducted at School A among fifth grade teachers. Pre- and post-intervention data were collected on implementation day to evaluate the …

Standardizing Preoperative Screening: A Color-Coded Triage Tool Quality Improvement Project, Lyn Green

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Abstract

Background: Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) require effective preoperative screening to ensure appropriate patient selection and minimize day-of-surgery (DOS) cancellations, which affect patient safety, operational efficiency, and financial performance.

Local Problem: In a Northern California ASC serving a racially diverse, predominantly older-adult population with a high burden of chronic diseases, the DOS cancellation rate was 3.84%, exceeding the 2.3% institutional benchmark. Inconsistent preoperative screening contributed to avoidable cancellations.

Methods: A pre- and post-intervention quality improvement design evaluated the effect of a standardized screening tool and staff education on DOS cancellations.

Interventions: The Preoperative Stoplight Tool, a color-coded triage system classifying …

...Of Cabbages And Kings, Spring 2026, Emeriti Society, University Of The Pacific

Emeriti Newsletter: "...Of Cabbages and Kings"

"...Of Cabbages and Kings" is the newsletter of the University of the Pacific Emeriti Society. Read more about the Emeriti Society of Pacific by clicking here.

Staff Education Regarding Training Caregivers On Services For Patients With Dementia In Enhancing Patient Safety And Security, Winnie O. Osuji

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Perceptions Of Pregnant And Early Postpartum Women On Maternal Mortality, Virginia Queen Edochie

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Halina In Indecent, Grace Olinksi

Student Theses

In December of 2025, I had the privilege of playing Halina in Paula Vogel’s theatrical love letter Indecent. It ran December 5th-9th in the New Workshop Theater at Brooklyn College, and was directed by MFA Directing candidate Sam Plattus. Indecent sprawls across time and place to tell the story of Sholem Asch’s controversial and groundbreaking play God of Vengeance. Halina, the female “Middle,” of Vogel’s archetypal acting troupe, takes on the roles of many mature and worldly women, including Manke, the prostitute and doomed lover of God of Vengeance, the actresses who portray Manke throughout the play’s history, hopeful immigrants, …

International Law Situations: Blockade, Raul (Pete) Pedrozo

International Law Studies

This Situation examines the right of belligerents to establish and enforce a blockade and the right to conduct visit and search of enemy and neutral merchant ships globally outside neutral waters.

Soft Power, Arab Media And Sports Mega Events: Coverage Of Fifa 2022 And Lessons For Future Arab Hosting, Lynne Kennedy, Maaira Shahbaz, Ala Al Rajabi

All Works

Sport mega-events (SMEs) increasingly transcend athletic competition, functioning as strategic instruments for national identity formation, statecraft, and soft power projection. This dynamic is particularly pronounced in the Gulf, where Qatar’s successful hosting reignited regional rivalries and attracted unprecedented global scrutiny. While existing scholars have extensively examined Western media portrayals of SMEs, a notable gap remains for academic engagement with Gulf media. Dismissed as state-controlled and analytically lacking, we contend that such media offer a rich site for exploring how small states use media as soft power, to construct and contest legitimacy, identity, and global influence. This analysis suggests how state-aligned …

Student Learning Outcomes In Online Learning Settings: Online Learning Outcomes, Ashraf Bany Mohammed, Yaping Zhu, Ra'ed Masa'deh, Mahmoud Maqableh, Hazar Hmoud, Enas Musa Al-Lozi, Viswanath Venkatesh

All Works

Online learning has become prevalent across the globe since the COVID-19 pandemic. With this change and continuing growth of online learning, understanding its impact on student learning outcomes is critical. This paper focuses on different learning outcomes in online learning. The authors extend the online learning effectiveness literature by investigating the role of quality on student online learning outcomes. Further, the impact of quality is examined on various dimensions of student outcomes, including cognitive outcomes (engagement), psychological outcomes (flow), affective outcomes (satisfaction), and academic outcomes (learning performance). They conducted an online survey among students (N=910) to examine the impact of …

A Praxis Of Transformative Care: Centering Historically Resilient Students At A Pwi, Tanaisha Coleman

Dissertations

Campus cultural centers frequently treat student resilience as an individual struggle rather than a collective responsibility, obscuring systemic failures. At a predominantly white institution (PWI), historically resilient students, those from diverse backgrounds who have historically endured the structural load of institutional exclusion, carry the compounded weight of navigating systemic barriers while driving institutional change. This qualitative study disrupts traditional narratives of surviving and thriving to examine how undergraduate students constituting a student advisory committee (SAC) coconstructed critical resilience rooted in transformative and collective care.

Using community-based participatory research (CBPR), this study positions students as coarchitects of their institutional experiences. Over …

Held In Sediment, Kati Lowe

Masters Theses

This thesis examines time as a durational, non-linear condition shaped through emotion and perception rather than a sequence of forward-moving events. Through painting and related material strategies, the work focuses on aftermath, residue, interruption, and return. Throughout this thesis, terms such as misalignment, double vision, fragmentation, interruption, and recurrence function as a conceptual vocabulary for describing instability within memory, embodiment, and lived experience. Blurred edges, doubled forms, and punctures in the surface register a lag between experience and comprehension, especially in relation to grief, trauma, depression, memory, and embodied perception. Neon color functions as a counterpoint to delay, signaling persistence, …

Useful Useless Object, Jisu Han Jung

Masters Theses

If spicy ramyun is spicy for others but not for me, is it still spicy

ramyun? This question begins Useful Useless Object, my investigation

into furniture as a site where function, perception, and value are

constantly negotiated rather than fixed. From this question, I

explore how meaning is shaped by the unstable relationship between

object and user. In furniture, usefulness is often treated as an

objective standard, measured by comfort, efficiency, or practicality.

However, this project argues that usefulness is never universal;

it is subjective, relational, and dependent on individual experience,

expectation, and desire.

Through making objects that sit between …

The Right To Withdraw: Soft Boundaries And Material Refuge In The Workplace, Zhihao (Sky) Xing

Masters Theses

Traditionally, architecture has provided physical protection through solid structures and defined boundaries, while modern interior spaces have evolved further to serve function, efficiency, and the operational needs of society. These include open-plan offices, art school studios, and other public spaces like libraries. Although physical rigidity and operational efficiency have been well served by the modern built environment, the psychological experiences of those within it remain largely overlooked - a lack of privacy, emotional support, and space for emotional withdrawal.

This research explores why contemporary workplaces often expose individuals to sensory overload and why people often retreat to stairwells, restrooms, or …

Breathing Structures: Hygroscopicity Of Fibers., Nawal Urooj

Masters Theses

Cities like Singapore, Mumbai, Karachi, and regions of Ghana experience persistently hot and humid climates. In these regions, humidity in built environments significantly affects both human comfort and the durability of building materials. Yet traditional mechanical dehumidification strategies are energy-intensive, environmentally taxing, and socially uneven in their accessibility. We must challenge the existing systems for thermal comfort, the inefficient role Architecture plays in it, and the socio-economic politics associated with thermal comfort in developing countries.

Karachi, a coastal city in the south of Pakistan, has extremely high relative humidity and high temperatures throughout most of the year. In this region, …