Digital Commons Network^™

Enhancing The Eden Alternative Model With Well Standards: A Case Study Analysis, Mariah Stoner

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

This thesis investigates the potential for improving the Eden Alternative Model, a person-centered approach to elder care that emphasizes creating a homelike environment and meaningful relationships, using WELL Standards, a building certification system focused on enhancing human health and well-being through improvements in environmental quality. Through a mixed-methods approach involving quantitative data analysis and qualitative case studies, this research examines how WELL Standards, which cover aspects such as air quality, water quality, lighting, and thermal comfort, can improve environmental quality and resident satisfaction within the Eden Alternative Model. This research introduces a tailored approach to elder care by combining these …

Stop Design: Rethinking The Approach To Public Transit's Architecture, Elizabeth M. Nielsen

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

Public spaces are the foundation of our social health and wellbeing, but are often designed without considering the needs of the public, creating spaces that people do not feel encouraged to use. Just as public space design as a whole often falls short of serving the public, the same can be said for a subset of public space design, public transit stops. While they are public spaces created for the purpose of waiting, their design rarely reflects this.

Well-designed public transit stops are capable of both maintaining existing ridership and drawing in new riders. Most commonly, this design occurs at …

Recognizing Injustice, Reclaiming Voices: Establishing A Missing Persons Database For Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women And Children In Nebraska, Bayly W. Watson

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Indigenous people have been the victims of harsh persecution since the time of colonization; this has negatively impacted Native communities and has contributed significantly to the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children (MMIWC) across the United States and Canada. Under Legislative Bill 154, Richards et al. (2021) conducted an initial study to identify missing Native cases in Nebraska and in 2023, the Attorney General appointed a Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) Liaison to help combat the number of missing Indigenous in the state. This thesis contributes to previous research by analyzing 20,049 reports from three …

Heat Induced Diagenesis And Osteometrics: An Experimental Approach To Assessing Thermal Alterations To Forensic Anthropological Data On Dry Bone, Audrey Holbeck

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Fire appears in forensic casework in instances of arson, vehicle fire, house fire, to conceal evidence, or, in increasing contemporary frequency, wildfire, as a result of climate change. Thermal alteration is a destructive process to osseous material and can impact the accuracy of identification methods and trauma analysis by alteration of the structure, appearance, and morphology of human remains. This study seeks to validate previous research on the metric and morphological changes bone undergoes when exposed to extreme heat, and how that may impede estimation of metric features such as stature. Three long bones, a humerus, femur, and tibia, from …

Wildfire And Decomposition: A Taphonomic Analysis Of Thermal Alterations And Decomposition, Ashley Novak

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Within the field of forensic anthropology, practitioners may be faced with remains that have been thermally altered by thermal alterations caused by wildfire. Within the field, very little research has been conducted examining how these thermal events impact rates of decomposition. While research has been conducted generally on the effects of thermal alteration on decomposition, these studies do not look through this lens and provide answers to the question of how do thermal alterations caused by wildfires affect rates of decomposition? This research examines the effects of thermal alteration caused by wildfire on the rate of decomposition. A decompositional study …

Trends In Dna Aanalysis To Determine Postmortem Interval: A Systematic Lilterature Review, Victoria S. Kashkin

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Forensic taphonomy is a recently popular field within forensic anthropology with limited research in the Central Great Plains. Given decomposition varies by region, more studies must be done to understand aspects of decomposition in this region. However, it is one of the most important subfields of forensic anthropology since determining postmortem interval (PMI) is extremely important to successfully identifying a missing individual if other indications of who the individual is are nonexistent. In this study, a systematic literature review was conducted to answer what trends are seen in research being done for using DNA to determine PMI, and what methods …

Empowering Diversity: A Comprehensvie Approach To Minority Risk Management Education, Jahqethea Johnson

Applied Science Program: Theses

Federal programs are pivotal to the foundation of the United States agricultural sector. Program payments impact the economic well-being of agricultural producers, yet accessibility, outreach and education disparities remain prevalent among socially disadvantaged producer and agriculturists. From 2020-2024, an average of $21.7 billion dollars in federal agricultural payments have been paid to producers. Although federal funding historically supports commodity crops, livestock producers also depend on a distinct set of federal risk management programs, which are often less visible but pertinent for operational sustainability. There is a growing focus on the need for addressing disparities faced by socially disadvantaged producers and …

Land8fire: A Complete Study On Wildfire Segmentation Through Comprehensive Review, Human-Annotated Multispectral Dataset, And Extensive Benchmarking, Anh Tran

Data Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Early and accurate wildfire detection is critical for minimizing environmental damage and ensuring a timely response. However, existing satellite-based wildfire datasets suffer from limitations such as coarse ground truth, poor spectral coverage, and class imbalance, which hinder progress in developing robust segmentation models. In this paper, we introduce Land8Fire, a new large-scale wildfire segmentation dataset composed of over 20,000 multispectral image patches derived from Landsat 8 and manually annotated for high-quality fire masks. Building on the ActiveFire dataset, Land8Fire improves ground truth reliability and offers predefined splits for consistent benchmarking. We evaluate a range of state-of-the-art convolutional and transformer-based models, …

Implementing Early Detection Of Cognitive Impairment In Primary Care To Improve Care For Older Adults, Nicole R. Fowler, Katherine A. Partrick, James Taylor, Michael Hornbecker, Malaz Boustani, Jeffrey L. Cummings, Tim Macleod, Michelle M. Mielke, Jared R. Brosch, Chinedu Momoh

Brain and Mind Institute

Primary care is the ideal setting for early detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD), as it serves as the primary point of care for most older adults. With the growing aging population, reliance on specialists for detection and diagnosis is unsustainable, highlighting the need for primary care-led assessment. Recent research findings on successful brain health prevention strategies, AD diagnostic tools, and anti-amyloid treatments empower primary care to play a central role in early detection and intervention. Primary care-focused resources are being developed, including tools for cognitive assessments and materials designed to educate patients …

Examining How Internally And Externally Motivated Individuals Choose When, How, And Why To Confront Racial Prejudice, Kristin Budziak

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Experiencing racism is associated with negative outcomes, including obesity and poor mental health (Berger & Sarnyai, 2015). Therefore, exploring strategies like interpersonal confrontation, which has been shown to reduce prejudice, is essential (Czopp et al., 2006; Paluck & Green, 2009). We examined what more internally (affected by personal values) and externally motivated (affected by social reward) people consider when deciding when confronting racism. White participants (n = 270) viewed hypothetical scenarios with a racist remark or non-racist remark. They decided whether to confront these scenarios and indicated their motivations, reasonings, and methods. Results showed that more internally and externally motivated …

Voluntary Intermittent Access To Combined Alcohol And Nicotine In Mice—Consumption And Withdrawal Effects, Alyssa M. Potts

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The prevalence of alcohol and nicotine use is widely known, though the co-abuse of the two is often understudied. Studies have shown that nicotine dependence and daily nicotine consumption increase with higher levels of alcohol consumption1. Nicotine use has been shown to decrease the subjective effects of alcohol and increase alcohol craving. Previous studies using the intermittent access (IA) paradigm in C57BL/6J (B6) mice have shown that B6 mice readily increase or escalate consumption of alcohol in this paradigm. Still, there is little information on alcohol and nicotine co-consumption and withdrawal using the IA paradigm. The goal of this study …

Relationship Between Past And Present Physical Activity On The Self-Reported Well-Being Of College-Aged Students With And Without Add/Adhd, Eleanore Cornn

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This study explores the relationship between past and present physical activity for college students with and without ADD/ADHD on their self-reported perceptions of well-being.

Behind Bars, Behind Lies: The Role Of Jailhouse Informants In Juror Decision Making, Anna Pierce

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Jailhouse informant testimony is a leading cause of wrongful conviction, especially in severe cases (e.g., rape and murder) with severe punishments (Warden, 2005). The current study investigated the impact of multiple jailhouse informants’ testimonies upon juror decisionmaking, especially when providing consistent or inconsistent testimony. Participants (n = 102) read a murder trial summary with two informants - consistent statements, two informants - inconsistent statements, one informant, or no informant. Results indicated that the multipleconsistent condition had significantly higher guilty verdicts and higher perceptions of credibility than all other informant conditions. Inconsistent statements reduced guilty verdicts and perceptions of credibility, yet …

Is There A Limit? Honor Ideology And Perceptions Of Extremely Violent Responses To Threat, Alexandria Elise Archer

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Honor ideology revolves around the idea that men must obey strict masculine norms including toughness, bravery, and a lack of showing one’s emotions. These expectations contribute to stigma against mental illness and help seeking behavior due to perceptions that these behaviors are “unmanly”. Research has failed to examine who men who act in an honor consistent way (i.e., aggressive response to threat) but also struggle with mental health issues may be perceived within the framework of honor ideology. For this reason, we explored whether masculine honor ideology predicted differing perceptions of a man with schizophrenia versus a man without mental …

The Evolution Of Dental Aesthetics: An Artistic And Cultural Journey Through History And Race, Naya L. Weems

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This thesis explores the intersection of art, dentistry, race, and healthcare through a critical analysis of how visual culture has shaped societal perceptions of dental aesthetics from antiquity to the modern day. Beginning with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Renaissance anatomical drawings, the study traces how artistic portrayals of teeth evolved into tools of both medical education and social hierarchy. Particular attention is given to the racialization of dental aesthetics, examining how caricatures, colonial pseudoscience, and exclusionary marketing practices contributed to enduring stereotypes and disparities in oral healthcare. Through the lens of cultural symbols like grills—once markers of status among Etruscans, …

The Geopolitics Of Digital Regulation, Aziz Z. Huq

University of Chicago Law Review

Contemporary regulation of new digital technologies by nation-states unfolds under a darkening shadow of geopolitical competition. The United States government operates simultaneously in a domestic political environment dominated by oligopolistic firms competing to expand, and in an international political environment wherein it competes against other sovereign nations by cultivating and deploying digital technological capacities for geostrategic economic and military ends. Thanks to the ensuing burst of crosscutting pressures, both national and supranational regulation can take on surprisingly reticulated, even baroque or perverse, forms.

Three recent monographs offer illuminating and complementary maps of these geopolitical conflicts and the national responses to …

Decentering Property In Fourth Amendment Law, Michael C. Pollack, Matthew J. Tokson

University of Chicago Law Review

For the past several decades, privacy has been the primary conceptual foundation for Fourth Amendment search law. The canonical test for Fourth Amendment searches accordingly looks to whether the government has violated a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Yet privacy is no longer the sole determinant of Fourth Amendment protection, as the Supreme Court has recently added a property based test to address cases involving physical intrusions on land or chattel. Further, given the ambiguity of the reasonable expectation of privacy test, a variety of influential judges and scholars have proposed relying primarily, or even exclusively, on property in determining …

Moving To Learn: Georgia, K-12 Teachers' Perspectives On Physical Movement Strategies In The Classroom, Remel Williams

Ed.D. Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, interpretive research study was to better understand Georgia K-12 core content area teachers’ perceptions of physical movement, how students responded to physical movement strategies, as well as understand any supports and barriers when planning for physical movement strategies during the 2023-2024 school year. Data for this study was collected from public K-12 core content area (math, science, reading, language arts, foreign language, history/social studies) teachers who had been in the classroom for at least one year. Their responses were gathered through a Qualtrics questionnaire and through interviews and focus groups via Zoom. Through the study, …

Tennessee Science Teachers’ Views, Challenges, And Practices Addressing Scientific Misinformation In The Science Classroom, Lauren Wilmoth

Ed.D. Dissertations

Scientific misinformation was a major threat to society in the 2020s because individuals often made ill-informed decisions impacting their well-being and the well-being of others. Because of the unique nature of scientific misinformation, key stakeholders advocated for science education to incorporate skills associated with identifying scientific misinformation into science curricula. Despite the call for action, there was little extant research about how high school science teachers addressed and felt about addressing scientific misinformation. Therefore, the purpose of my interpretive qualitative study was to determine Tennessee high school science teachers’ views, challenges, and practices addressing scientific misinformation in the science classroom. …

Trading Diversity? Judicial Diversity And Case Outcomes In Federal Courts, Ryan W. Copus, Ryan Hübert, Paige Pellaton

Faculty Works

Are federal lawsuits resolved differently based on the race or gender of the judges assigned to hear them? Recent empirical research posits that women and judges of color decide cases more liberally, at least in some identity-salient areas of law. However, these studies analyze small numbers of cases and judges, and use research designs that limit their causal interpretations. Using an original dataset of all civil rights cases filed in 20 federal district courts over multiple decades and a strong causal identification strategy, we find that assignment of cases to judges of color or women has no statistically significant effect …

Evaluating Registered Dietitians Nutritionists' (Rdn) Knowledge, Attitudes, Behaviors And Practices Of Social Media Best Practices And The Role Of The Rdn Social Media Influencer, Ciera Burback

Theses and Dissertations

The growing use of social media has expanded the potential for RDNs to work with brands to promote products, as other health professionals have done for many years. However, scrutiny of the profession of nutrition and dietetics brought RDN influencers under fire due to disclosure practices and the perception of conflicts of interest in the social media sphere. This survey examined the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of current RDNs and social media best practices. With 163 respondents over the age of 18 and currently an RDN, part one of the survey included demographic questions, multiple choice and Likert scale questions …

The Experiences Of Caregivers In Implementing Medical Nutrition Therapy When Raising Children With Type 1 Diabetes, Mallory Reeves

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is a complex, chronic endocrine disorder that accounts for roughly 5-10% of the diabetic population globally. Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) is the foundation of diabetes self-management. Since MNT is fundamental for managing and caring for T1DM, medical providers must understand the challenges of implementing recommendations at home. This study sought to identify what experiences caregivers face regarding implementing MNT recommendations when raising children with T1DM. A mixed-methods design collected data through focus groups and a demographic survey. The focus group took place via Zoom. Inclusion criteria were adults over the age of 18 who had …

The (N)Ice Cream Shop Business Plan Project: Applying Project Management Tools And Principles To A Business Plan, Christopher Jimenez

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

The (N)ice Cream Shop Business Plan Project explores the feasibility of launching a nitrogen-infused ice cream shop in Eagle River, Alaska. With no direct competition, this venture offers a unique opportunity, though it must address financial feasibility, regulatory requirements, and market competition. The project follows a structured two-phase approach: 1. Research and Planning: Conducting market analysis, financial forecasting, and risk assessment to determine demand, pricing strategy, and potential challenges. 2. Business Plan Development: Using findings to create an investor-ready business plan, including operations, funding, and a project management framework for implementation. A key component involves assessing consumer interest. Among respondents …

The Anchorage School District (Asd) Project Management Curriculum Project, Julia Wigren

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

The growing need for project management (PM) skills in post-secondary careers presents a significant opportunity for early career preparation. Industry projections indicate that millions of professionals will be needed in project management-oriented roles in the coming years. As the workforce becomes increasingly project-based, the demand for well-trained early career project managers continues to rise. Ensuring that students gain PM skills before graduation provides them with a competitive advantage in the job market. Recognizing this opportunity, the Anchorage School District (ASD) sought to incorporate PM education into its newly implemented Academies of Anchorage, aiming to prepare students for college, career, and …

Risk Management Planning For Arctic Infrastructure Construction Projects, Michel Scott

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

Arctic construction projects face unique challenges such as ice-rich aggregates, severe weather, and limited resources. This project creates an Arctic-specific risk management system for Alaska Arctic Constructors (AAC), featuring a tailored Risk Register, Lessons Learned Archives, Past Performance Register with historical costs and production rates, and ongoing management of these tools. These scalable tools mitigate risk and enhance planning capabilities. Estimating and management teams gain sharper awareness of threats and opportunities for optimization. Leveraging expertise from knowledgeable key stakeholders via surveys and interviews (designers, government professionals, contractors) plays a critical role in developing these tools while addressing threats inherent to …

The Space Between: Engaging And Withholding The Self, Maya Mcdonald

All Theses

This thesis, The Space Between: Engaging and Withholding the Self, documents my journey in understanding the self through the act of oil-painted self-portraiture. Through an exploration of eye contact, body language, non-performative representations of self, and the tension between engagement and detachment, this body of work examines the complexities of visibility, agency, and self-perception. Using my own body as both subject and metaphor, I investigate the interplay between revealing and withholding, questioning the boundaries between what is seen and what remains obscured. Blending classical figure painting techniques with abstracted elements, my work engages in a dialogue between tradition and …

Untethered And Unraveled: Isolated Motherhood In The Liminal Stage, Ashton K. Wronikowski

All Theses

In examining Kate Chopin’s The Awakening alongside anthropologic theories of liminality, this paper examines the becoming women traverse as they transition between various social roles: girl, woman, mother. Edna is a maternal character attempting to unweave herself from her roles as mother and wife, and she finds this desire to go backwards to the freedom she experienced as a girl is proven to be impossible. The unmooring of her psyche and her subsequent suicide is indicative of a failure, not of her own accord, but in the social preparation and support she receives within her new identity. Social anthropologists further …

Cloud-Native Mucad For Design Reviews, Emily C. Petty

All Theses

This research explores the potential of a cloud-native multi-user computer-aided design (MUCAD) system to improve communication and efficiency during engineering design reviews and shorten the design timeline for military tools. First, a literature review is used to generate a list of thirty-five collaboration-oriented requirements that aim to ensure concurrency, annotations, heterogeneity, security, IP protection, version control, and viewing within a MUCAD system. A comparative evaluation of existing collaborative CAD system architectures, including cloud-native, cloud-enabled, and a single-user system with external file sharing, is conducted to determine how well each system architecture fulfills the generated collaboration-oriented requirements. Following this, a survey …

An Examination Of The Lived Experiences Of Black Women Instructional Coaches (K-12), Courtney Tate

All Dissertations

The underrepresentation of Black women notably impacts the landscape of educational leadership as a result of a predominantly White workforce within the teaching profession (N. N. Johnson & Fournillier, 2021). This inequity not only highlights systemic inefficiencies as evidenced by worsening educational experiences for African American students following Brown v. BOE but also underscores the silence within studies exploring the experiences of Black women faculty in instructional leadership roles (Brown, 2005; Foster, 2005; N. N. Johnson, 2024; N. N. Johnson & Fournillier, 2021). The role of instructional coaches in shaping teacher practice positions them as integral to instructional leadership; it …

Essays On Macroeconomics, Krishna Sharma

All Dissertations

The first chapter examines the role of return migration in driving innovation within India’s tech startup ecosystem, using a novel dataset constructed from web scraping of startup profiles, LinkedIn data, and patent databases. By capturing founders’ international experience, education, and innovation outcomes, the analysis reveals that returnees significantly contribute to higher inno- vation levels, particularly through patent filings. Returnee-founded startups exhibit an 18% higher rate of patent filings compared to those led by locals. The study employs OLS, Poisson regression, Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM), and Instrumental Variables (IV) to address selection bias and endogeneity concerns. U.S. immigration policy changes provide …