Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Ai Adoption On Digital Entrepreneurial Intention: A Meta-Analysis, Xandra Precious Okori

Theses and Dissertations

AI adoption and its widespread use have sparked debates about the future of work, job displacement, and the evolving entrepreneurial landscape. While AI is often seen as a threat to traditional employment, research shows that this emerging technology is more likely to change task structures rather than eliminate entire occupations or industries. This shows that there are new entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly digital, that potential entrepreneurs can venture into. This thesis uses a meta-analytic approach to study the relationship between AI adoption and digital entrepreneurial intention, addressing inconsistencies in current research.

Following PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive search was conducted across Web …

Exit Topology Effects On Low-Mach Jet Impingement, Alejandro Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Planar PIV characterizes a low‑Mach (M = 0.05) air jet impinging normally on a plate at fixed spacing H/D = 4.0. Four nozzles of equal hydraulic diameter (D = 50.8 mm) are compared: circular, rectangular (AR 3), diamond, and elliptical (AR 2); asymmetric exits are tested in major and minor orientations. Mean velocity, azimuthal vorticity, and turbulence kinetic energy reveal that exit topology strongly modulates the stagnation footprint and shear‑layer growth. The circular jet forms the canonical toroidal wall jet and a narrow stagnation core (dₛ = 0.9D). Orienting the rectangular major axis toward the plate elongates the core to …

From Witness To Weapon: How Elizabeth Barrett Browning’S “The Cry Of The Children” Embodies And Transforms The Rhetorical Situation, Elyssa Vianey Solis

Theses and Dissertations

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” employs trauma-driven rhetoric to expose Victorian child labor exploitation.

Combining literary analysis with rhetorical theory, this research contextualizes the poem within 19th-century industrial exploitation, showing how Browning transforms documentary evidence like the 1842 Children’s Employment Commission Report into emotional testimony. Visceral imagery, ironic juxtaposition, and embodied suffering weaponize pathos to reveal systemic abuse and moral urgency. Applying Lloyd Bitzer’s and Richard Vatz’s theories, we can posit that Browning both responds to and defines the crisis, merging poetic protest with social reform as civic intervention.

By engaging Bitzer and Vatz, this paper argues …

Chronicles Of A Caliche Road: Lessons From The Monte Through A Poetic Currere Of Language, Memory, And Identity, Brenda Ochoa

Theses and Dissertations

This autobiographical study explores how language, memory, and identity are shaped through lived experience in the South Texas brushland known as the monte. Situated within the cultural and linguistic landscape of the Rio Grande Valley, the study examines how land, native plants, and regional wildlife function as an informal curriculum that shapes voice, silence, and ways of knowing beyond formal schooling. Grounded in autobiographical inquiry, the study uses poetic currere as both an analytic process and a mode of representation to illuminate the relationship between language experience, memory, and identity across time. Data sources include personal memories, reflective journals, original …

Use Of Complementizer That Among English-Spanish Bilinguals, Aziz Abraham Quenun

Theses and Dissertations

Languages vary in how they signal the presence of an embedded clause. Both English and Spanish use what are termed complementizers—that in English and que in Spanish—but in English, the complementizer is often optional while in Spanish, it is generally required. This thesis tested if the presence of que in a Spanish sentence could induce a bilingual speaker to insert a previously omitted that into an English sentence using a syntactic priming task. The results of these trials showed that this was the case, finding a statistically significant priming effect, supporting the idea that syntax is cognitively shared across languages …

Academic Anxiety, Anxiety Sensitivity, And General Mental Health In Collegiate Student-Athletes, Finley Gabrielle Elkins Sims

Theses and Dissertations

Collegiate athletes’ mental health is on the decline, and they have unique experiences that can influence the prevalence of mental health struggles. This study examined academic anxiety, comorbid forms of anxiety, and predicting factors in 187 collegiate student-athletes across 29 U.S. colleges. Athletes had significantly higher levels of academic anxiety and general anxiety compared to a college nonathlete population. There were significant gender differences in athletes, with females having greater levels of anxiety sensitivity, academic anxiety, sport anxiety, general anxiety, depression, and a history of depression than male athletes. Gender, history of depression, anxiety sensitivity, and depression were significant predictors …

Pesticides And Poverty: How Socioeconomic Factors Relate To Pesticide Application In The Continental Us, Reed Smetter

Theses and Dissertations

Pesticides are often used to help reduce the populations of weeds, insects, and pathogens in agricultural and urban settings, reducing the risk of outbreaks and losses of agricultural yield. The communities that surround agricultural areas often bear the brunt of the negative community and environmental health effects of these chemicals, and are frequently rural, poor, and lack critical infrastructure resources. Pesticide application volumes are often linked closely with specific health effects. In this study, I apply social vulnerability theory to compare the potential connections between the application rates of pesticides and socioeconomic variables across the United States using a nationwide …

“Daría Mi Vida Por Ti”: On The Rhetoric Of Sacrifice Through The Lens Of Motherhood From The Border, America Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will discuss the implications of sacrifice as an ideology inflicted upon Chicana mothers. It will center on answering the following inquiry: why should a Chicana/Mexican mother sacrifice? This question addresses the role of sacrifice by discussing aspects of Chicana/Chicanx feminist rhetoric and Catholicism that influence the perception of motherhood as sacrifice and martyr. I construct and employ the rhetorical concept of MA↔MÁ to articulate the relationship between la maternidad y el martirio as attributed to mothers from the borderlands. This concept examines whether this affliction is bestowed by dominant and marginalizing narratives or self-imposed through divine merits. I …

The Impact Of Nutrition On Insecticide Resistance And Gene Expression In Aedes Aegypti, Esmeralda Guadalupe Rosas

Theses and Dissertations

The development of insecticide resistance in Aedes aegypti, a major vector of dengue and Zika viruses, threatens vector control efforts, particularly in endemic regions such as South Texas. Insecticides remain widely used; however, their overuse has accelerated metabolic resistance mediated by cytochrome P450 enzymes. Environmental factors such as larval nutrition may influence mosquito physiology and resistance-associated gene expression, yet this relationship remains poorly understood. This study examines how larval nutritional conditions affect the expression of cytochrome P450 genes linked to pyrethroid resistance in Aedes aegypti. Larvae were reared under five dietary treatments differing in lipid and protein ratios, and adults …

Spatiotemporal Evolution Of Flow Decline And Water Consumption In A Highly Regulated Transboundary River: The Lower Rio Grande/Bravo, Ana Yarely Casillas Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

Long-term flow variability in transboundary rivers reflects the combined influence of water availability, infrastructure development, and binational water use. Integrating historical discharge with evolving water-use data remains challenging due to fragmented records and nationally bounded assessments. This study reconstructs a 125-year discharge record (1900–2025) from historical Water Bulletins and modern observations at 12 gauging stations, providing a spatiotemporal assessment of flow evolution and water-budget components in the Lower Rio Grande/Bravo (LRG).

Discharge records were grouped into four hydrologic regimes—natural (1900–1913), pre-dam (1935–1950), post-dam (1974–1989), and modern (2010–2025)—and analyzed alongside binational water-use data across major sectors. A basin-scale water budget, using …

Leading For Impact: An Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods Study On Leadership Actions Driving Academic Gains Beyond Mock Projections, John Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how principals lead schools to achieve academic outcomes that exceed projected performance. Using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, the study first identified campuses that demonstrated statistically significant improvement between projected outcomes based on mock assessments and actual performance on state accountability measures. Quantitative analyses, including paired-samples t-tests, repeated measures ANOVA, and correlation analyses, revealed significant differences between projected and actual outcomes, variation across assessment cycles, and increasing alignment between mock and summative assessments over time. Standardized mean difference scores were used to identify campuses that demonstrated the greatest positive deviation from projected performance.

In Phase 2, …

Parasites Of Meaning: When Interpretation Becomes Infection, Kimberly Medrano

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the impulse to seek moral certainty in morally ambiguous first-person confessional narratives and argues that such certainty is unnecessary. When confronted with narrators whose moral positions remain unclear, readers often project their own moral frameworks onto the text to place the narrator within specific moral binaries. This impulse reveals the reader’s discomfort with ambiguity. This study analyzes the confessional narration, No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. The thesis will explore how its confessional narrator resists moral clarification. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of moral binaries and J. Hillis Miller’s concept of the “Critic as Host,” this thesis …

Two Essays On Finance: Co-Opted Directors And Mergers And Acquisitions And The Impact Of Biodiversity Risk On The Cost Of Bank Loans, Fariba Gholami

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprises of two papers. In the first paper, co-opted board members, those appointed after the CEO assumes office, are poor monitors and, contrary to prior assumptions, ineffective advisors. I show that board co-option is associated with suboptimal merger and acquisition (M&A) decisions, adverse deal characteristics, and lower acquirer’s short- and long term returns and operating performance. These results are robust to the use of propensity score matching, entropy balancing, Instrumental variable using 2SLS, and difference-in-differences to address selection bias and endogeneity. Cross-sectional evidence indicates that the negative effects of board co-option are more pronounced when boards are less …

Teaching At The Ai Crossroads: Educators’ Experiences, Ethics, And Practice In Pharmacy Education, Crystal Marie Zuniga

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence (AI), including emerging generative AI tools, is increasingly influencing healthcare workflows and reshaping expectations for workforce preparation. Pharmacy technician education must respond to these shifts while maintaining academic rigor and prioritizing patient safety, ethical practice, and professional accountability. This qualitative study examined pharmacy educators' perspectives on the integration of AI within the Pharmacy Technician Program at Southern Valley College, with attention to how educators interpret AI’s relevance, risks, and instructional implications in pharmacy education.

Data collection included one focus group and individual semi-structured interviews with four pharmacy educators with diverse professional experiences in pharmacy practice and education. Data …

Teaching Under Restriction: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experiences With Censorship, Johnny Salinas

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the perceptions of pre-service teacher candidates at a predominantly minority university in South Texas about educational censorship in K–12 schools. Grounded in critical theory, the research explored how restrictive policies—including book bans and legislation related to race, gender, and identity—affect candidates’ developing professional identities and career aspirations. Data were collected through an anonymous, open-ended questionnaire and analyzed to identify six interconnected themes: autonomy and fear, book bans, policy and legislation, race and identity, subject-specific impacts, and readiness and confidence. Participants described an increasingly tense educational climate marked by heightened scrutiny and ambiguous policy expectations. They voiced …

Teacher Stories In A Place-Based Science Education Program In The Trans-Nueces Region, Brian Craig Gabrysch

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examines the emerging professional narratives of five educators involved in the Integrated Oceans Program at a coastal South Texas school district situated within the Trans-Nueces region. Guided by the central research question—What are the emerging teacher stories from a place-based science program in the Trans-Nueces region, and what do we learn about place-based science education from the narratives?—the study employs narrative inquiry methodology following Riessman (2008) and Bruner (1985) to investigate how educators construct meaning from their practice within a program anchored to the Laguna Madre wetlands ecosystem.

The theoretical framework integrates interpretivism (Benton & Craib, 2010), …

La Panza: Un Acto De Rebeldia Para Los Atravesados Y Los Que Siguen Despues / The Panza: An Act Of Rebellion For The Inbetweeners And Those Who Follow After, Abigail Guadalupe Cantu

Theses and Dissertations

Our ancestors, family members, and ourselves that live in the borderlands have embodied knowledge, and/or an innate intuition that comes from the pit of our soul, particularly from our “panza”; hence, the creation of a panza consciousness as the focus for my thesis. I’m trying to “rediscover” the embodied knowledge that has been taken from us and how we can learn to harness these forms of knowledge into a societal shift ( i.e. how we interact with others, how we see our bodies, how see the creation of knowledge, and how we see the world). Although, Eurocentric ideals sought to …

Accurate Polyp Segmentation With Visual Mamba, Diego Adame

Theses and Dissertations

Medical image segmentation is a fundamental task in computer-aided diagnosis because it enables precise delineation of anatomical structures and pathological regions from clinical images. While convolutional neural networks and Transformer-based models have achieved strong performance on many medical segmentation benchmarks, CNNs struggle to model long-range dependencies and Transformers often incur high computational complexity for high-resolution medical images. Recently, state space models have emerged as an efficient alternative for dense prediction tasks due to their ability to capture long-range dependencies with linear complexity. However, existing Mamba-based segmentation models still rely on pixel-wise raster scanning that disrupts spatial locality and use simple …

A Case Study Of One-To-One Mobile Teaching And Learning Environments Measuring Creativity In A Rural Elementary School In Deep South Texas, David Warren Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined how creativity is enacted within rural one-to-one mobile teaching and learning environments in Deep South Texas. Grounded in the frameworks of mobile learning affordances (Klopfer et al., 2002), the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, and the SAMR model, the study explored how instructional practices, student agency, and contextual conditions influenced creative learning experiences in an elementary school setting. Data were collected from five elementary teachers at a rural South Texas district and included semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and samples of student-created artifacts. Data analysis followed a systematic process of first-cycle coding, second-cycle axial …

Multivariate Time-Series Forecasting Of 24-Hour Ambulatory Blood Pressure Using Long Short-Term Memory And Temporal Fusion Transformers, Sebastian Alejos Torres

Theses and Dissertations

Time series play a central role in healthcare by enabling continuous patient monitoring and forecasting of physiological and clinical measurements. Traditional models, such as autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), are limited in capturing nonlinear dynamics and irregular sampling. In this study, we develop and evaluate Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks and Temporal Fusion Transformers (TFTs) to forecast 24-hour ambulatory systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) time series enriched with demographic and clinical features. Mean absolute error (MAE), root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and R² were used to evaluate predictive accuracy and temporal pattern …

Developing Bilingual Expressive Language Tools For Spanish-Speaking Families In The Rio Grande Valley, Edessa Xcarlet Reyes

Theses and Dissertations

This pilot study examines the development of dialect-sensitive expressive language tools for bilingual children in the Rio Grande Valley. A cross-sectional survey design was used to examine Spanish-speaking caregivers’ confidence, language use, and perceptions of communication support across home, school, and medical settings. The study focuses on culturally and linguistically responsive practices that account for regional Spanish dialectal variation. Findings from this research are intended to inform the development of family-centered expressive language resources and contribute to equitable assessment and intervention practices for bilingual children in speech-language pathology.

The Rio Grande Valley In Text: Exploring The Borderland Within Social Studies Textbooks Via Synoptic Text, Ana Laura Escobar Fuentes

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative, synoptic text inquiry examines how fourth-grade Texas history social studies textbooks portray Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the U.S-Mexico border, specifically the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). This research sought to answer the following questions: How do Texas history social studies textbooks portray Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the US-Mexican border in three South Texas school districts? Within these portrayals, what historical representations/content are included, diminished, or excluded regarding the vast majority of the Mexican or Mexican American community?

Guided by the conceptual framings of Miller and Almaraz and Valerio-Jiménez (consensual history), Garza and his colleagues (critical histories), Anzaldúa’s geography of …

Perceptions Of Educators To Recognize And Respond To Suicidal Ideation Of Secondary Students, Clary Aaron

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study explored how secondary teachers in East Tennessee perceive district-provided suicide prevention training and its role in supporting students experiencing suicidal ideation. Eleven middle and high school teachers who had previously made a crisis referral participated in semi-structured interviews. The study examined teachers’ experiences, perceived strengths and limitations of training, and needed resources. Findings revealed that teachers felt confident recognizing warning signs, especially behavioral changes, when strong student relationships existed. However, training was often described as repetitive, generic, and minimally engaging. Social media and limited support systems were seen as major stressors for students. Teachers emphasized relationship-centered …

The Application Of Natural Language Processing Towards Auditing Of Unstructured Data: A Design Science Approach, Dennis K. Amoatey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Financial auditors must manually review large volumes of unstructured text that may include contracts, internal policies, footnotes, and journal entry descriptions. This time-intensive process introduces risk of human error and inconsistency. Despite advances in automation, no systematic approach exists for applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) to this problem at scale. Using a design science approach, this study develops a framework that demonstrates how NLP techniques can be incorporated across key phases in the audit process, including planning, internal controls evaluation, evidence gathering, and reporting. Initial evaluation through expert feedback had a mix of responses. While some argued difficulty with data …

“The Distance And Time Difference Aren’T Helping”: Family Communication Practices Of African Graduate Students Adapting To A New Country, Hummuh Abubakar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined how international graduate students maintained long-distance communication with family members while adapting to life in the United States. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with seven international students, the research explored how participants sustained emotional closeness, manage disclosure, and select communication media across geographic distance. Guided by Communication Privacy Management Theory and Media Richness Theory, the study analyzed how students regulated private information and strategically used video calls, voice calls, and messaging platforms to meet relational and emotional needs. Findings revealed four primary themes: reliance on digital communication technologies; the emotional and psychological functions of family communication; structural …

Resource Allocation Trade-Offs Between Longevity And Reproduction In Daphnia Magna, Amelia Pearson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although trade-offs between longevity and reproduction have been described for a long time, the genetic mechanisms by which organisms modulate allocation of resources between these two essential processes remain poorly understood, due to their complex nature and their modification by existing nutritional states and environmental cues. Daphnia magna represents a valuable model for investigation in this area due to their moderate lifespan and cyclic parthenogenetic mode of reproduction, allowing for the easy study of gene by environment interactions. This dissertation first investigates the change in mortality, reproduction, activity, and gene expression when fully fed Daphnia and calorically restricted Daphnia are …

Branding The Protector And Helper: How The U.S. Army National Guard Presents Itself In Humanitarian Outreach, Aaron Otoo Acromond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how the United States Army National Guard constructs and communicates its humanitarian identity during domestic disaster response through official social media. Addressing limited scholarship on how hybrid military institutions frame their roles in domestic crises, the research applies qualitative content analysis to visual and textual posts from official Facebook and Instagram accounts during three disasters: Hurricane Ian (2022), the Hawaii Wildfires (2023), and Hurricane Helene (2024). The analysis identifies three communication themes: operational preparedness and technical capacity, humanitarian assistance to affected civilians, and collaboration with civilian agencies. These narratives portray the National Guard as a professional and …

Parent Engagement And Advocacy In Individualized Education Programs In Rural Appalachian School Districts, Mollie Rutledge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore parent engagement and parent advocacy in the Individualized Education Program (IEP) development and implementation in rural Appalachian school districts. Parent engagement and parent advocacy in Individualized Education Program (IEP) development and implementation are persistent challenges in special education. By intentionally grounding this research in rural Appalachia, the researcher responded to calls for education research that is attentive to the complexity and diversity of rural communities. Parents in rural areas face unique challenges related to poverty, isolation, and limited resources that can influence their engagement and advocacy in the IEP process. The …

Building Services Engineering March/April 2026

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Political Legacies Of Malcolm X, Sumair Ahluwalia

Theses

This study explores the ways in which Malcolm X’s legacy has been co-opted by various institutions and actors, including, but not limited to, politicians, historians, the general public, the federal government, and other commentators. As a result of this co-optation, Malcolm’s revolutionary ideals have been diluted or sanitized in the years since his assassination in 1965. Different approaches have been utilized to reframe Malcolm’s legacy, which include associating him with American liberalism, framing his arguments at the end of his life as markedly less radical, and external interference with popular works about Malcolm, including The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Additionally, …