Digital Commons Network^™

Body Of Light, Lucy C. Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Body of Light is a two channel video installation, incorporating a combination of archival material and present day footage to explore and speculate upon the traces of Audrey Munson’s life that remain, a ghostly presence creeping into our current world.

Pepperbox - May 2, 2025, Student Newspaper Of Arcata High School

The Pepperbox

Volume 97, Number 6

I Let The Ocean Hear My Song, Zachary Heske

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This chapbook manuscript focuses on themes of sexual identity and yearning. The sequence of poems follows a speaker who indulges in the delusion of being in a romantic relationship with someone they were once friends with. In the manuscript, the speaker must sort through his emotions and accept his truth to have closure from this friendship. The sequence encapsulates a variety of forms. One recurring form throughout the sequence is the alignment of text on the page to signify conversations between the speaker and his imagined lover. The speaker’s dialogue is aligned to the left, and the imagined lover’s dialogue …

“Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes”: Singular Female Perspectives In As I Lay Dying And Ulysses, Rowan I. Tully

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and James Joyce’s Ulysses utilize both multiple perspectives, but what they both share is a single chapter granted to a complex maternal figure. With Addie Bundren in As I Lay Dying, her chapter comes in the middle, and she quickly breaks down any notions the family had of her in the first half of the novel, altering the tone and complicating the family’s grief. Conversely, Molly Bloom’s singular chapter in Ulysses are the final words of a novel hundreds of pages in length. Through pure stream of consciousness, she shares the grossest parts …

Advertising To Children: A Content Analysis Of Ryan's World, Cora Denny

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Ryan’s World is a children's toy review YouTube channel with over 36 million followers and features kid YouTuber Ryan Kaji. A qualitative content analysis of the YouTube channel Ryan’s World was conducted to observe the rhetorical strategies the videos employ to sell Ryan’s World products, as well as how those strategies compare to traditional advertising. An analysis of twelve videos resulted in dominant themes of increasing brand familiarity and product performance of Ryan’s World products. These were accomplished through the use of traditional advertising rhetorical strategies such as product placement, special effects, appeals, and more. The study shows that the …

A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena: Exploring Post-War Ethics, Claire Marshall Watkins

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In my paper, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena: Exploring Post-War Ethics, I explore the embodiment of care ethics and informed altruism through the novel’s protagonists, Akhmed and Sonja, respectively, who each care for a local girl Havaa whose home has been destroyed and whose father has been disappeared by the Russian Feds from their small Chechen village. Akhmed immediately takes her on as his own while Sonja is hesitant. As the novel progresses, Sonja and Akhmed each provide an even amount of time and effort into her care, though they approach it differently. Akhmed—Havaa’s neighbor and family friend—works together with …

Reading The Fine Print: Poetry And Community On Campus, Logan Edwards

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This capstone presentation is the culmination of a creative project that aimed to promote poetry through Fine Print, UMW’s poetry club on campus. The goal was to make poetry accessible for all on campus and build a specific community that celebrates it. Beyond spreading love of poetry, the purpose of this capstone was to leave Fine Print in a good place by building the club’s long-term engagement and participation, which grew exponentially throughout the semester. Although still a tight-knit community of poets, Fine Print encourages casual attendance to both events and meetings by anybody who finds it intriguing. Through regular …

May 2, 2025 Ereporter, University Of Alabama At Birmingham

eReporter (campus newsletter)

No abstract provided.

A (Loper) Bright Future?: How The Supreme Court Opened A Path For Drug Reform, Malich, Jack

Santa Clara Law Review

We are witnessing a sweeping transformation of administrative law. The Supreme Court has taken aim at what it believes is a constitutional error: the power of the administrative state. All parts of the so-called “fourth branch of government” are undergoing shifts in the legal doctrines governing their structure. For those in favor of a strong administrative state, most of the Court’s new approach to agency action may represent a sinister effort to prevent the making of disfavored policy by the Executive. However, advocates of agency power would do well to remember that the administrative state can be oppressive. No agency …

David Richardson V. Usa

2025 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Mentoring Teacher Identity Development Among Early Childhood Preservice Teachers, Marla Ruth Pankratz

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem addressed in this study is that many mentor teachers struggle to support early childhood preservice teachers in developing teacher identity. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand mentor teachers’ challenges and what professional development or support fosters development of teacher identity in early childhood preservice teachers. Guided by Wenger’s communities of practice conceptual framework, data were collected via semistructured interviews with seven participants who had at least 3 years of early childhood teaching experience and had mentored an early childhood preservice teacher from a midwestern regional university in the last 5 years. Data analysis involved …

How The Code Of The Street Contributes To Incarceration Among Black Women, Jennifer Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Rising incarceration rates of Black women in the United States highlight the urgent need to examine factors contributing to this trend. This study investigates how Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street influences behaviors that lead to incarceration among Black women in low-resource neighborhoods. Via the social disorganization theory, the research explored how economic instability, weakened social institutions, and community disorder contribute to adopting the street code and how adherence to the code contributes to participants’ incarceration. This qualitative study employed thematic analysis of interviews with 11 formerly incarcerated Black women, focusing on their perceptions regarding how the street code shaped …

“Take This Job And Shove It”: How Black Women’S Fight For Economic Rights Informed Their Participation In The Broader Social Movements Of The Twentieth Century, Kyndle Diane Lee

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the vital role of Black women in the American labor movement during the twentieth century, emphasizing how their leadership and union participation were central to both labor organizing and the broader fight for human rights. Black women workers navigated and resisted the effects of racism, sexism, and class exploitation in a century marked by industrial expansion, economic upheaval, and major civil rights struggles. Far from passive participants, they emerged as key organizers, negotiators, and strategists in their communities, labor unions, and national movements. Additionally, their work extended beyond their demands for better wages and safer working conditions. …

Memorable Whale Watching Tourism Experiences: Insights From The Azores, Erose Sthapit, Teresa Borges-Tiago, Muhammet Kesgin, Carlos Picanco, Brian Garrod

Articles

This study examines the roles of learning, experience co-creation, and experiential satisfaction as antecedents of a memorable whale-watching tourism experience, as well as the relationships between experiential satisfaction, memorable whale-watching tourism experience, hedonic well-being, place attachment, and pro-environmental behavior. Using data collected from 247 tourists who had taken a whale-watching trip in the Azores, partial least squares structural equation modeling was then applied to the dataset. The results indicate that the higher the levels of learning, experience co-creation, and experiential satisfaction, the more memorable is the whale-watching tourism experience. Experiential satisfaction and memorable whale-watching tourism experience are, in turn, significant …

The Interaction Between Physical Activity And Fruit And Vegetable Intake On Body Composition, Om S. Ghetia

Honors Scholar Theses

Objective: Fruit and Vegetable (FV) intake and Physical Activity (PA) are important lifestyle factors associated with body composition. This study assessed the combined impact of meeting FV intake and PA recommendations on body composition measures including body mass index (BMI), percent body fat (PBF), and waist circumference (WC) in adults aged 20–64 years from diverse backgrounds.

Design: A cross-sectional study conducted in Northeastern Connecticut.

Methods: A total of 124 participants completed a one-week dietary and PA record followed by anthropometric assessments. Participants were categorized into groups based on FV intake (≥400 g/day vs. < 400 g/day) and PA levels (≥600 MET-minutes/week vs. < 600 MET-minutes/week). Independent t-tests and chi-square tests were used to compare dietary intake, PA levels, and body composition outcomes across groups.

Results: Participants meeting FV recommendations had significantly …

Microbial Community And Water Quality Assessment Of Crassostrea Virginica Habitats In Southeast Florida, Stacy Brown

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) are essential habitat-forming species that contribute significantly to coastal water quality due to their filter-feeding behavior. Unlike other coastal regions in the Gulf of Mexico and Northeastern United States, oysters are not commercially managed in Southeast Florida and as a result sparse data exists on locations of the Eastern oyster habitat. Similarly, the benefits of oyster reefs to water quality are also not fully documented in Southeast Florida. Although beneficial and often referred to as keystone habitat building species, populations of C. virginica are not currently listed as protected species so little work has …

Creative Coastal Futures: Developing Cultural And Creative Industries, Katharine Willis, Chris Bennewith, Kasper De Graaf

School of Art, Design and Architecture

The UK is a coastal country, no one lives more than 80 miles from the coast, and indeed when you get down to into Cornwall and Devon this reduces to just 20 miles. Our coasts are a rich source of natural and cultural assets replete with places people value, visit and choose to live in. Yet our coastal communities are some of the most overlooked, challenged and deprived in the country. The strengths that exist in our coastal areas – around natural resources and pockets of specialised skills – are compromised by low levels of economic capacity and activity, aggravated …

Enhancing Communication For Individuals With Complex Communication Needs: The Critical Role Of Training And Evidence-Based Aac Strategies, Rachel H. Williams

Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education Faculty Publications

Communication is a basic human right, as affirmed by the National Joint Committee for the Communication Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities (NJC, 2024). For individuals with complex communication needs (CCN), special considerations must be taken into account to ensure equitable access to this right and must be supported through appropriate services, tools, and strategies. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems are essential for many individuals with CCN, enabling access to expressive and receptive language. However, successful AAC implementation requires well-trained educators, speech-language pathologists, and support staff who understand how to assess, model, and support communication effectively (Brady et al., …

I Will Not Accept This Rose: "The Bachelor(Ette)," Gender Stereotypes, And Self Perception, Rylie Vann

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Reality television is a cornerstone of modern-day TV programming, and typically features some element of competition, a makeover, or finding love. The Bachelor began airing in 2002, and the franchise that was built off the initial season continues to be a big name in romantically themed reality television. However, the show employs a variety of tactics during filming and while editing that presents a heteronormative view of contestants. The extent of this influence was explored using a mixed-method approach. A content analysis of several episodes from The Bachelor and The Bachelorette was conducted in order to determine how many instances …

Jtc 25: Biscuits And Family, Rebecca Lauck Cleary

University of Mississippi News

This story is part of the 2025 Journey to Commencement series, which celebrates the pinnacle of the academic year by highlighting University of Mississippi students and their outstanding academic and personal journeys from college student to college graduate.

The Mujahedeen E-Khalq Of Iran (Mek): Agents Of Democratic Revolution Or Cultic Oppression?, Molly Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (MEK), an Iranian oppositional group that has engaged in a decades-long effort to depose the Iranian government. The goal of this thesis has three parts. First, it examines if the MEK should be classified as a new religious movement/cult. It also addresses the implications of such status given the MEK’s claims that it functions as a democratic entity and that it can be trusted to govern Iran in democratic fashion. Secondly, it examines if Iranian disinformation has influenced the MEK’s reputation. Thirdly, it analyses how the MEK has been able to …

Optimizing Small Ai Models For Biomedical Tasks Through Efficient Knowledge Transfer From Large Domain Models, Girish Sundaram

Theses and Dissertations

The PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) framework is a widely adopted methodology for structuring clinical research questions and extracting relevant information from unstructured medical texts. However, traditional approaches for PICO classification demand computationally expensive domain-specific language models, such as BioBERT and ClinicalBERT, which require extensive training and large annotated datasets. This dissertation introduces Distilled Rapid Embedding Transfer (DRET), a novel knowledge transfer method designed to enable resource-constrained domain adaptation. DRET aims to efficiently transfer biomedical domain knowledge from large, specialized models to a compact, general-purpose model, DistilBERT, thereby enhancing its ability to perform domain-specific tasks without access to the original …

Shifting Alliances: Are Black People Increasingly Identifying As Republican?, Clamont C. Mack

Student Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates claims that Black Americans are increasingly aligning with the Republican Party. Drawing on theories of party identification and political realignment, I compare competing perspectives to determine appropriate indicators of realignment within the Black community. Using quantitative analysis across several datasets, I find a modest rise in Republican identification over the past decade, but a more pronounced decline in Democratic affiliation. These findings suggest not a realignment toward the Republican Party, but rather a dealignment from the Democratic Party. This challenges popular media narratives of realignment and instead points to growing political disengagement among Black Americans.

Found Words, Lost Homes: Immigration And The Language Of Identity, Ali Motamedi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the relationship between personal experience and public space through a body of work that moves between image, text, and material. Rooted in an intimate perspective and extending into streets, landscapes, and communal environments, the practice examines how nomadism—both physical and conceptual—shapes ways of seeing and making. Drawing from my background in engineering, a deep connection to Farsi literature, and the lived experience of immigration, the work reflects on themes of displacement, belonging, and identity.

To Protect The Sky From Falling, Charles Lambert

Theses and Dissertations

Using ceramic, found objects, metal and wood, my practice is a meditation and questioning of care, efficiency, repair, structure and place. Architectural elements of support rendered in clay are the initial point of entry to give a soft, lived-in quality to a built environment that is often devoid of the mark of the hand and body. Imprints of the hand are left, and the objects are often deformed in ways to subvert the perceived functionality. The focus on ceramics centers around a play with the binary of soft and hard and the external changes that create its transformation. The work …

A Limit That Recedes, Chloe Wilcox

Theses and Dissertations

In "A Limit that Recedes", I discuss my art practice in terms of accumulation and techniques of reproduction, such as casting, printing, and repetitive actions. I contextualize my work among artists such as H.C. Westermann, Isa Genzken, and Paul Thek. The work featured in this thesis explores ideas of aspiration, longing, and failure, and explores themes of the fraught relationship of the human and nature.

The Influence Of Money In Politics, Aminata Dieng

Undergraduate Research Symposium Podium Presentations

Money plays a powerful role in shaping political outcomes by significantly influencing who gets elected and which policies are prioritized. Campaign financing, which includes donations from individuals, corporations, and Political Action Committees (PACs), often determines a candidate's visibility, resources, and ability to compete effectively. Those with greater financial backing tend to dominate media coverage and reach more voters, which can tip the scales in elections.

The Impact Of Mentorship On Burnout Among Novice Nurse Faculty, Lucas Gless

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Burnout among novice nurse educators contributes to increased rates of faculty turnover and vacancies in nursing education. This is especially significant in rural settings. This quality improvement project aimed to determine the impact of mentorship on novice nurse educators’ perception of burnout at a rural community college in East Texas. Utilizing a mixed methods design, novice nurse educators with less than two years of academic nurse education experience were assigned experienced faculty mentors over an eight-week period. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) measured emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment, both before and after the intervention. Data analysis, using the …

Quality Improvement Project Impact Of Multidisciplinary Patient Education On Heart Failure 30-Day Readmission Rate, Jeanne P. Williams

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Patients diagnosed with heart failure are at an increased risk for readmission to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, and their care costs are projected to continue to increase. This Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) quality improvement (QI) project aimed to implement an evidence-based initiative to mitigate the increased heart failure 30-day readmission rate on a 30-bed medical-surgical telemetry unit in an acute care facility. Using the teach-back communication method, multidisciplinary patient education was implemented to prepare patients diagnosed with heart failure to manage their condition once discharged home. The theoretical and implementation frameworks used were Lewin’s Change Model, …

Entry-Level Physical Therapists’ Perceptions Of Initial Employment, Richard G. Hubler Jr.

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

As physical therapy (PT) grows as an autonomous profession within the ever-changing healthcare system of the United States, PT educators strive to provide students all the training that they require for a career in professional clinical practice. Although graduates of PT education programs receive a doctoral degree, their preparedness to succeed in their early career is unclear. The purpose of this qualitative research study is to investigate the perceptions of entry-level physical therapists (PTs) toward early professional practice and their initial employment choices. Entry-level PTs that have been employed full-time for one year or less were interviewed to gain an …