Digital Commons Network^™

Chimes: February 23, 2026, Calvin University

Chimes

A vibrant tapestry of cultures: Rangeela celebrates 30 years by Ava Roush & Ellerry Johnson

Puentes: Students building bridges amidst immigration concerns by Jorie Cho

Late Night Era's Concert: The end of an era by Ashley Hamons

Cave Night kickoff hosts local artists by Alec DeYoung

Composting streamlined and expanded to all underclassmen dorms by McKenna Wilkinson

Let's talk about sec: Calvin sexuality series confronts purity culture by Sarah Sparling

Scaling rock walls and studying Scripture by Ella Vanden Berg

Showpower: A New Paradigm For Community Engagement, Sean Green

Community Engagement

For decades, the dominant paradigm in community engagement, education, and social work has relied heavily on the concept of "empowerment" to address the systemic gaps hindering marginalized populations. However, the etymological and practical applications of empowerment have increasingly devolved into a paternalistic, deficit-based model, implying a directional transfer of authority from a privileged institution to a subjugated community. As recent scholarship confirms, historically marginalized groups—such as first-generation and low-income students—continue to face persistent structural barriers despite decades of these traditional institutional interventions (López et al., 2023). This white paper formally introduces a novel theoretical framework, lexicon, and operational mindset: Showpower. …

“Sometimes You Need A Middleman”: Negotiating Family Engagement For Foster And Kinship Caregivers Involved With Child Welfare, Anna Wasim, Catherine A. Labrenz, Nelkasia Graves, Samantha Zuniga Thompson, Monica Faulkner

Graduate School of Social Work: Student Scholarship

Family engagement is increasingly prioritized in child welfare policy and practice, yet limited research has explored how foster and kinship caregivers perceive and navigate this process. Understanding caregivers’ experiences is critical to advancing relational permanency and improving outcomes for children in foster care. Using an adapted grounded theory design, this qualitative study examined the experiences of 24 foster and kinship caregivers from two agencies participating in a family engagement practice model in one state. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups, and were analyzed thematically. All participants provided informed consent, data were de-identified, and pseudonyms were assigned to …

Academic Internship - Deborah's Place, Olivia Redmond

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

Within Deborah’s Place (a non-profit providing shelter and housing opportunities for women experiencing homelessness), I am interning at Teresa’s Interim Housing. Teresa’s is a ten-bed, 120-day interim housing program. I give initial intake assessments, facilitate group activities, and allocate resources to 4 program participants. I use the harm reduction framework while practicing motivational interviewing techniques as I work with clients to find permanent, stable housing.

My overarching goal is to transition 5-7 clients into permanent housing. Many steps go into getting clients housed - some within my control and many are not..

I have the following learning and achievement goals …

Should We Trust The Noma Model?, Sarah Allen

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This project will explain Stephen Jay Gould’s Nonoverlapping Magisteria Model (NOMA) and then explore two differing sides' critiques of the model. Criticism from those who subscribe to scientism will argue that NOMA holds science back due to morals being out of its domain, and the faith-based criticism will argue that NOMA oppresses religious findings and evidence while arguing that science and religion work together to produce facts. To conclude the project, we will reexamine NOMA to determine if it’s a trustworthy model or if a new model is needed to better explain the relationship between religion and science.

Depressive Symptoms Predict Cannabis Initiation Among Mexican American Young Adults, Srishty Arora, Caroline North, C. Nathan Marti, Seth J. Schwartz, Bara S. Bataineh, Liza Talavera-Garza, Alexandra Loukas, Anna Wilkinson

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

Background: Factors contributing to cannabis initiation among Hispanic young adults remain understudied. Methods: We examined the independent and interactive roles of depressive symptoms, family cohesion, and family conflict on cannabis initiation one year later among 616 18-29-year-old cannabis-naïve Mexican American college students in Texas. Results: Mixed-effects logistic regressions indicated that greater depressive symptoms predicted cannabis initiation one year later. Neither family cohesion nor family conflict moderated the depressive symptoms-cannabis initiation association. Conclusion: Mexican American young adults experiencing depressive symptoms may initiate cannabis use to cope with emotional distress. Additional research should examine the factors that drive cannabis initiation in this …

The Beacon, February 20, 2026, Beacon Staff

The Beacon, 2025-2026

Local musicians put stamp on valentine’s day; Perspectives through the decades: 1960s; Joint flute and vocal student recital; Sony continues run of great animation with “GOAT”; “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack more faithful than film; Godzilla concert theme is more than it seems; Senior practicum: social work majors; Club Spotlight: Swing Dance Line Dance; OC sightseeing: Dutch Heritage Museum; Reaching new heights at NW; Why you should play “Dwarf Fortress; Overwatch dominates in 2026 games; Raiders win again as postseason approaches; Raiders finish strong in final indoor meets; The Winter Olympic’s scandals; Apocalypse now: upcoming chapel series on Revelation

Behold Invisibility, Anne Mcgrath

Creative Nonfiction Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Remembering: Reconfiguring The Diorama Of Monas As Augmented Living Document, Suprayitno Suprayitno, Zulfatun Sofiyani, Rahmi Rahmi

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper examines the Monas diorama as a central apparatus in Indonesia’s politics of remembering, whose narrative consolidation during the New Order rendered it a state-authored monument of national memory. Drawing on Foucault’s distinction between monument and document, Ferraris’s ontology of documentality, and Perret’s concept of document design as projective epistemology, the study reframes the diorama as a documentary assemblage shaped by inscription, power, and institutionalized forgetting. Through diachronic, synchronic, comparative, and experimental analyses, the paper diagnoses failures across the physical, social, and cognitive dimensions of Monas as a document, revealing narrative authoritarianism, representational rigidity, and the absence of plural …

Leadership Practices And Staff Well-Being In Psychiatric Emergency Services: The Impact Of Staff Morale And Burnout On Retention And Attrition, Shamagne N. Richardson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Workforce burnout, low morale, and high turnover are persistent challenges in psychiatric emergency services, where clinicians work in high-acuity environments. These conditions threaten workforce sustainability and continuity of crisis care. The problem addressed in this study was difficulty retaining staff within a nonprofit psychiatric emergency services organization due to burnout and morale erosion. The purpose of this study was to examine how leadership practices influence staff morale, burnout, and workforce retention at Psychiatric Emergency Stabilization Services X, located in New Jersey. The study was grounded in a qualitative conceptual framework informed by the Baldrige Excellence Framework. The study population included …

Faculty Senate Minutes, Academic Year 2024-2025, February 19, 2026, Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Minutes

Minutes for the Faculty Senate Meeting held February 19, 2026.

Spirituality Educational Intervention To Enhance Nurse Resiliency, Anna Cerra

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Relevance/Significance: Healthcare environments are complex exposing nurses to demanding workloads, staff turnover as well as personal stress. Resilience can help new nurses withstand the emotional stress of the workplace and improve nurse retention (Chaing et al., 2021). Evidence suggests that Spirituality Training provides resources to support clinical nurses’ use of spirituality within hospital settings to help diffuse stress, build resiliency and enhance patient outcomes (Chaing et al., 2021; Caton, 2021). Often nurses are not adequately prepared to provide spiritual care.

Purpose: The purpose of this evidence-based practice, EBP, project is to provide an educational structure using Spirituality Training …

Spartan Daily, February 19, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 166, Issue 13

February 19, 2026, The Daily Mississippian

Daily Mississippian (all digitized issues)

No abstract provided.

February 19, 2026, James Madison University

The Breeze, 2020-

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Optimising Time For Schoolwide Improvement: Developing A Time-Use Study Process For Mtss Leadership Teams, Hank Bohanon, Eleanor Charlton, Alejandra Vazquez, Anna Press

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

School reformers have inundated staff with numerous improvement efforts in recent years. These efforts include multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) that involve early, preventative interventions. Educators, already burdened with heavy workloads, may feel frustrated by the lack of time to implement MTSS approaches. Researchers suggest that time-use studies could help educators better understand and optimize their use of temporal resources. However, no time-study research has specifically addressed school MTSS leadership teams. This research involved developing a time-use study process to support leadership teams in gathering and reflecting on time-use data to improve MTSS implementation. Researchers gathered educators’ recommendations from four …

The Disproportionate Impact Of Hiv On Young Women In Durban: Exploring Gendered Vulnerabilities And Socioeconomic Barriers, Adrian A. Nolasco

Capstone Collection

South Africa has a high rate of HIV, with young women in Durban especially affected due to social, economic, and cultural challenges. This study looks at the experiences of young women living with HIV and the views of healthcare professionals caring for them in KwaZulu-Natal. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five women and three medical professionals to explore how HIV affects their lives, the challenges they face, and how they cope.

The findings show that both structural and personal barriers make it hard for young women to stick to treatment. Long waits at clinics, limited …

A Reflection On What Pharmacists In Different Countries Can Learn From One Another, Aaryaman Khurana, Patricia Darbishire

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

What would be the first words that come to mind if you were asked about the US health care system? I asked that question to several of my friends and pharmacy peers and received mixed responses such as “expensive,” “confusing,” “hard to navigate,” and “best in the world.” This was not surprising considering the many options and the varying quality of medical procedures, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals available. I wondered how responses might differ if I posed the same question about their health care to those in a third-world country. So, I asked the same question of friends and family …

Ethical Decision-Making And Modification Of Service Delivery: Social Workers In Connecticut During Covid, Marie Elana Hollingsworth

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Social work professionals often experience demanding and intense situations while facing organizational restructuring during crisis situations. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to explore the viewpoints of frontline social workers regarding their ethical decision-making processes in response to the mandatory modifications of the service delivery protocol during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enck’s biomedical and ethical decision-making framework grounded the study. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 10 frontline social workers in Connecticut who had been employed with a social service agency for at least 3 years, but no more than ten. Findings from coding and thematic analysis yielded …

An Exploration Of The Site Supervision During Internship Experience For Clinical Mental Health Counseling Students, William Thomas Zaffiro

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) study was to understand how CMHC students experience and create meaning of site supervision during internship under the new CACREP (2024) Standards. The bulk of the literature on this topic comes from allied social sciences and little research is available in the clinical mental health discipline. As such, there is a need to better understand this experience from the perspective of CMHC students. The study was grounded in interpretive phenomenology and used the rigorous IPA process to explore students’ lived experiences of supervision. I conducted a study using semi-structured interviews with eight …

The Relative Importance Of Cultural Competence And Compassion Fatigue In Predicting Nurse Prescribing Self-Efficacy, Debarah Lane Jowett-Gordon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As a result of the growing diversity among citizens requiring medical care, there has been a substantial increase in immigrants globally and in the United States. In the U.S. healthcare system, nurse practitioners (NPs) have been facing increased cultural challenges. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the relative importance of cultural competence and compassion fatigue in predicting nursing prescribing self-efficacy. Cultural competence served as the theoretical framework, as it focuses on how NPs can effectively communicate with patients from diverse backgrounds by understanding and respecting cultural differences, thereby building trust, improving patient outcomes, and providing quality healthcare. …

Minutes From February 18 2026, University Senate

University Senate Minutes

Minutes from February 18 2026 University Senate Meeting

Perceptions Of Former Inmates’ Mental Health And Substance Abuse Treatment Received During Incarceration, Garla Kathleen Snapp-Hart

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Access to effective behavioral treatment is critical for the imprisoned population and newly released individuals to reduce reentry into the penitentiary system. Social workers within correctional facilities can determine the need for treatment, how often treatment is required, what specific treatment is necessary, and what resources will be needed to provide those treatments. A qualitative exploratory design was used in this study. I explored the quality of behavioral health treatment provided to the incarcerated population. Systems theory was used as the theoretical framework this study. There were 17 participants in this study who had been incarcerated in a Kentucky prison …

A Nurse-Led Staff Education Program To Prevent And Detect Elder Abuse By Caregivers In The Home, Nicola Violet Brown-Walters

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was a nurse-led, evidence-based staff education initiative designed to improve the prevention and detection of elder abuse in the home by caregivers within an outpatient primary care setting. Elder abuse places older adults at risk for physical harm, neglect, medication mismanagement, and violations of autonomy and patient rights. Elder abuse remains a pervasive and underrecognized problem in nursing practice, often resulting from limited staff education, inconsistent screening practices, and uncertainty regarding mandatory reporting requirements. The practice-focused question examined whether implementing a nurse-led targeted education program guided by the ADDIE instructional design model and …

The Impact Of Cultural Competence On Patient Outcomes In The Bahamas, Erinique Denise E. Ingraham

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In The Bahamas, the quality of care received by culturally diverse patients remains generally poor, highlighting an inability to adapt to the changing climate and adopt culturally responsive practices. The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to examine the relationship between perceived cultural competence of healthcare providers in The Bahamas and its impact on patient outcomes for the non-Bahamian patients they treat. The tripartite model of cultural competence grounded this study. The participants comprised 49 non-Bahamian patients from the public and private sectors. They completed the patient-reported physician cultural competency measure, self-efficacy for managing medications and treatments, and the …

Illinois State University Founding Celebration Old Main Bell Ringing And Awards Ceremony Program, February 19, 2026, Illinois State University

Founding Celebration Programs

Program for annual event celebrating the founding of Illinois State Normal University on February 18, 1857. This program was initially made available as a Foleon website. An Internet Archive capture of the site is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20261007170256/https://illinoisstateuniversity.foleon.com/founding-celebration/microsite-copy-1/. A PDF copy of the program's text and images is also available to download from this page.

Fostering An Inclusive Culture Of Belonging For Internationally Educated Nurses, Kate Williams, Marlene Porter

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Purpose: The intent of the Ambassador program is to foster an inclusive culture of belonging for internationally educated nurses (IEN) to aid in their acculturation to the organization and community.

Relevance/Significance: COVID 19 exacerbated the already stressed nursing workforce. Recruitment of IENs is a strategy to supplement the nursing workforce. There has been a 26% increase of IEN transitioning to US practice in a single year. Culture shock is a challenge that IENs may experience during their transition. Support provided from an Ambassador to an IEN during their transition is a strategy to assist with their acculturation potentially minimizing culture …

Executive Leadership System Improvement Program Proposal For Capturing At-Risk Patients In A Primary Care Setting, Winter Wilson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Unmet social determinants of health (SDOH) contribute significantly to poor health outcomes, increased healthcare utilization, and persistent inequities in access to care. In a primary care organization, the inconsistent identification and management of patients’ social needs resulted in variable documentation, limited referrals to social work services, and avoidable emergency department (ED) utilization. The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was to develop an executive leadership systems implementation proposal to standardize the identification and referral of at-risk patients through the integration of a validated social needs screening tool into the electronic health record (EHR). The guiding practice-focused question …

Comments On Treasury Notice 2025-68, Jin Huang, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

In December 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service announced their intent to issue regulations concerning Trump Accounts (also known as 530A accounts), requesting public comments on the intended regulations and related provisions. This testimony presents comments submitted in response to that request. In it, Jin Huang and Michael Sherraden summarize evidence from the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment (SEED OK), Maine’s My Alfond Grant, and Rhode Island’s CollegeBound Baby on the effectiveness of automatic enrollment in policy. They discuss the use of Social Security numbers, a centralized clearing fund, and a designated custodian network as tools …

Lived Experiences Of Delirium In Critically Ill Children: A Qualitative Study, Jasmin Moradi, Mirriam Mikhail, Laurie A. Lee, Chani Traube, Aimee J. Sarti, Karen Choong

Journal of Pediatric Intensive Care

Objective: To understand the lived experiences of delirium in critically ill children Materials & Methods: We conducted phenomenological qualitative interviews with critically ill pediatric survivors aged 0-18 years who had experienced delirium, along with their family caregivers and healthcare providers, from pediatric intensive care units in two tertiary care children’s hospitals in Canada. Cases were identified if they had a Cornell Assessment of Pediatric Delirium (CAPD) score of ≥ 9 for at least 48 hours. Results: Thirteen interviews were conducted, representing 10 index patients with delirium (age range: 7 weeks to 17 years). Participants shared experiences that were divided into …