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Cinnamon P. Carlarne, Albany Law School's Nineteenth President And Dean, Garry W. Jenkins, Katrina Fischer Kuh, Jonathan Rosenbloom, Marc Roark, Jessica Owley, Robin Kundis Craig, Keith H. Hirokawa

Articles

No abstract provided.

Employers As Information Fiduciaries, Bodie, Matthew T.

Santa Clara Law Review

In order to better protect users from the predations of large tech companies amassing their data, commentators have argued that these companies should be considered information fiduciaries for the purposes of collection, use, storage, and disclosure of that data. This Essay considers the application of the “information fiduciary” label to employers in the context of employee data. Because employers are handling ever greater quantities of employee data, and because that data is becoming more sensitive and potentially damaging to workers if misused, the law should account for this expanded role with expanded protections. The beginnings of how such a set …

Ecocriticism And The Young Adult Audience In Dry And The Islands At The End Of The World, Nicole Marie Sysyn

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis focuses on exploring and analyzing two young adult novels through an ecocritical lens. The authors of the young adult novels, Dry and The Islands at the End of the Earth, bring awareness to young readers about the progression of global warming and effects this devastation has on humans and animals. Both of these novels show character’s relationships with nature, decision making skills in terms of crisis, and coping mechanisms which can translate to young readers. There is a great balance of teaching young readers the importance of their own relationship with the environment and how to cope in …

The Secret Sauce: Examining Law Schools That Overperform On The Bar Exam, Christopher J. Ryan Jr., Derek T. Muller

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Since 2010, law schools have faced declining enrollment and entering classes with lower predictors of success despite recent signs of improvement. At least partly as a result, rates at which law school graduates pass the bar exam have declined and remain at historic lows. Yet, during this time, many schools have improved their graduates’ chances of success on the bar exam, and some schools have dramatically outperformed their predicted bar exam passage rates. This Article examines which schools do so and why.

Research for this Article began by accounting for law schools’ incoming class credentials to predict an expected bar …

Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In this article I target the altar at which many of us worship—the pursuit of rationality. For evidence purposes, rationality is defined as decisions that are reasonable, objective, inductive, and free from the bias of emotion. This view of rationality is deeply embedded in evidence scholarship and practice. It is also reflected in evidence rules like FRE 403, which treat emotional testimony as unfairly prejudicial simply because it is emotional. The anti-emotion view of rationality reflects the thinking of Western philosophical giants. Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Bacon all thought that men should strive for rationality by suppressing their emotions, because …

Retention Strategies Among Those On Community Supervision In The South: Lessons Learned During The Covid-19 Pandemic., Breana J. Uhrig Castonguay, Katherine Lemasters, Chris Corsi, Evan J. Batty, Taylor J. Krajewski, Madelene Travis, Craig Waleed, Carrie B. Oser, Kathryn M. Nowotny, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein

Sociology Faculty Publications

OBJECTIVES: Cohort studies must implement effective retention strategies to produce internally valid and generalizable results. Ensuring all study participants are retained, particularly those involved in the criminal legal system, ensures study findings and future interventions will be relevant to this group, who are often lost to follow-up: critical to achieving health equity. Our objective was to characterize retention strategies and describe overall retention among an 18-month longitudinal cohort study of persons on community supervision prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS: We implemented various retention strategy best-practices (e.g., multiple forms of locator information, training study staff on rapport building, …

The Age, Period, And Cohort Effects On Crime Rates In The Republic Of Korea, Byunggu Kang

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The age–crime relationship has been a theoretical and empirical puzzle for criminologists for decades. Although the age–crime curve is often considered a stylized fact, a large body of research suggests that the age–crime relationship is dynamic under the influence of age, period, and cohort effects. The impact of these effects can vary across different social contexts, as the consistency or variability in socio-economic and cultural factors experienced by consecutive generations or populations differs in each context. Thus, the extent to which age, period, and cohort effects contribute to the age–crime relationship in various social contexts is a question that requires …

Race And Ethnicity In Juvenile Justice Sentencing: The Role Of Static And Dynamic Community Threat, Victoria Lynn Nelson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Research consistently finds that Black and Hispanic youth are overrepresented at various stages of juvenile justice processing. However, less research has considered the role of community characteristics in juvenile justice processing, and much of this research has been mixed. This is particularly concerning given the explicit reliance on extralegal factors, and on the local organization of juvenile justice systems which likely make them considerably more vulnerable to community anxieties. Racial threat theory posits that as “threatening” populations increase, they begin to threaten economic and political resources of the dominant group. As this happens, the dominant group will retaliate with discriminatory …

When Payday Is Not Enough : The Impact Of Small Loan Regulation On Reported Crime In Cincinnati, Ohio, Colleen D. Mair

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Legislators have largely regarded payday lending, a type of alternative financial service through which borrowers obtain unsecured loans for fast cash, as predatory and detrimental for already vulnerable areas. Critics of this industry suggest that the use of payday loans creates a cycle of debt that can lead to several negative outcomes, including an increase in crime in the areas in which they are located. In an effort to address the negative effects of payday lending, several laws have been passed to regulate or eliminate traditional payday lending. Despite these intentions, prior research has produced mixed results about whether or …

Narrating Trauma, Developing Resilience, And Making Policy : A Comparative Study Of Traumatized Young Adults Caused By Aids-Related And Post-Disaster Bereavement In China, Shaojie Pan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Children can be affected by a variety of traumatic events as they grow up, but they still have the potential to show resilience. Along with the accumulation of research on trauma, resilience has also become an influential concept in the field of social welfare. Existing research has tentatively explored the socially constructed nature of trauma and resilience. From a social constructionist perspective, it is the narratives and interactions of people who have experienced traumatic events and other stakeholders that collectively shape the meaning of trauma and resilience. More importantly, these personal narratives, as well as larger social discourses, may have …

Synergic Concepts And Lexical Idiosyncrasies As Means Of Reconceptualization To Develop Bilingual Pragmatic Competence : A Study Of Sequential Bilingual Students In Different Sociocultural Contexts, Truong My Hanh Dinh

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation uses the Conceptual Blending Hypothesis from the socio-cognitive method presented and refined by Kecskes (2002, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2020) to explain how the lexical choice of bilinguals differs across sociocultural situations. Quantitative (lexical density, lexical diversity, and lexical sophistication) and qualitative (lexical concepts) processes demonstrate this variance. Hence, the thesis shows the interplay between two aspects of the bilingual’s word choice, namely conceptualizing and selecting words in the linguistic system, which influence word choice in context (i.e. individual words via words used in essay writing). It is hypothesized that a conceptual blending of the sociocultural loads of the …

A Phenomenological Study Of Social Workers' Meaning Of Food, Mood, And Their Readiness To Adopt Dietary Interventions With Clients Who Are Depressed, Ronald Anthony Bunce

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

As incidence of depression rises worldwide and treatment effectiveness remains flat, interest grows in developing novel treatments to improve outcomes for those seeking help for depression. Research on diet, nutrition, and depression suggests that food affects mood. The literature addresses how a certain dietary pattern may be incorporated in clinical treatment as a modifiable risk factor with those presenting with depression, but the voices of social workers are absent. Given that social workers are the largest providers of therapeutic services for those experiencing depression, the field has much to contribute to the development and assessment of new, non-pharmaceutical, treatment protocols. …

Morality, Context, And Crime Decision-Making, Shaina Herman

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Recent criminological advancements increasingly aim to better understand criminal behavior in context. This is particularly true regarding how perceptions of legal sanction risk are anchored in reality and influence offending decisions. Yet research on extralegal considerations such as morality has not kept pace. The current dissertation integrates criminological morality literature, with psychological research on Self Concept Maintenance Theory (SCMT) and moral identity, into a perspective on moral decision-making dynamics that integrates personal and situational factors. I utilize three data collections containing randomized experiments to investigate the situational malleability of moral evaluations and the interrelatedness with moral identity and criminal intentions. …

Examining Gandhian Ideals And The Feminized National Allegory In R.K Narayan's Waiting For The Mahatma, Fatama Zarin Khanam

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the character of Bharati in R.K Narayan’s novel, Waiting for the Mahatma, as a prominent female figure of political agency and representation of the role Indian women took during the revolutionary movement. Yet, also argues that problems arise when the author uses a feminine character as a national allegory and represents her as “Mother India,” because it makes the category of woman homogenous, neglecting to recognize the intersectional identities that make the lives of women diverse and incomparable. Additionally, another aspect of this argument is that Narayan’s depiction of Bharati fits into …

Thomas Malthus In East Asia : Population Policy, Elite Competition, And The Developmental State In East Asia, Yimang Zhou

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

East Asia is one of the most important origins of government-led population control in the mid-twentieth century. The states in Japan (1946-62), mainland China (1958-73), Korea (1951-1961), and Taiwan (1949-1964) developed different discourses and intervening policies of population control. In particular, Japan witnessed a population regime of human resource paradigm aimed at higher labor quality in the early 1960s, while the Chinese government launched a Malthusian paradigm to accelerate capital accumulation by slowing down population growth in the early 1970s. The states of Korea and Taiwan also established the Malthusian paradigm in the 1960s and transferred it to the human …

Abandoned Form : Secularity & Religion In The Eighteenth-Century British Novel, Kasey Waite

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abandoned Form rereads the theory of the novel from a post-secular perspective. Since the early 1980’s, theorists such as Nancy Armstrong, Michael McKeon, and Ian Watt have argued that the novel mimics Western civilization’s journey from irrationality to rationality by embracing secular ideologies and abandoning religious ones. Conversely, Abandoned Form contends that the eighteenth-century novel form depends on an inseparable relationship between the religious and the secular. Rather than being independent of religious influence, the eighteenth-century novel utilizes a dialectical engagement of secular and religious forces to create its formal structures. Focusing on the form of the novel, rather than …

The Burnout Crisis In Education : A Systematic Review Of Interventions To Ameliorate Burnout And Promote Self-Care In School-Based Professionals, Jacqueline Sturdevant Blass

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this study was to systematically review available research on interventions that aim to reduce burnout and/or promote self-care in school-based professionals. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was used to identify studies for inclusion. Six databases were reviewed and a total of 4,571 records were generated. The titles and abstracts of these articles were reviewed for the inclusion criteria, yielding 200 articles matching eligibility criteria. Additionally, 107 duplicates were removed, yielding 93 studies eligible for closer review. After reviewing these studies, a total of 59 studies were analyzed. Most studies included burnout as …

Lay Judges Vs. Lawyer Judges : How Much Difference Can A Law Degree Make?, Jingyi Fei

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

With about 13.2 million misdemeanor cases processed through the criminal justice system each year, an increasing number of researchers has shifted their interests from felony courts to lower criminal courts (Smith & Maddan, 2019). One aspect of these lower criminal courts that is of particular interest is the eligibility of non-lawyers to run for and hold judgeships. Although New York and 18 other states have permitted the employment of lay judges, court reformers have long questioned their ability to safeguard defendant’s due process rights. However, at no point in the history of agitation against lay judges have their critics sought …

Dominican Women Experiencing Violence: Transnationalism, Gender, And The Search For Social Justice, Anyeline Mejia-Mcdonald

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

My dissertation contributes to the study of feminicide and violence against women through a unique analysis of what Cecilia Menjívar calls “multisided forms of violence”, to which I add the transnational experience. Focused on the Dominican Republic, this dissertation asks what are women’s experiences of multisided violence; how do they respond, react, and resist; and what effect does transnationalism play? Informed by 16 months of ethnography, utilizing participant observation, content analysis, and 50 semi-structured interviews, my findings demonstrate that, due to the failure of bureaucratic policies and mechanisms to guarantee women’s safety, survivors are forced to negotiate social, political, and …

Value Congruence And Employee Engagement: An Exploration Of Mechanisms, Laura Santiago

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Employee engagement has been linked to a host of organizational outcomes such as turnover, commitment, and productivity, as well as employee outcomes such as depression, job satisfaction, and anxiety. As such, it is critical to understand how engagement can be fostered at work, or even predicted in applicants. Organizational culture has been linked to engagement, as well as person-job fit, but not enough research has been done on the link between organizational culture fit, or value congruence, and employee engagement. Specifically, not enough research has been done looking at why value congruence could lead to engagement. This study evaluates two …

Semiparametric Distributional And Quantile Models Applications In Health, Labor And Banking, Li Lu

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The first chapter study the medical expenditure on prescription drug utilization on racial/ethnic disparities using a partially linear quantile treatment effects (QTE) model. We consider the quantile treatment effect inequity from race conditional on other covariates. We find that people tend to spend more depending on prescription drug use as growing old, especially those with insurance coverage. In addition, females spend more than males generally, and the male minority groups have higher treatment effect values, compared to that White female usually spends a lot on medical expenditure. From a racial disparity perspective, we observe that the male Hispanic group QTE …

"Tu Eres Inmigrante, Pero Con Mucho Honor": Exploring School-Based Identity Messaging, Belonging, And Biculturalism In Central American Immigrant Students, Stephanie L. Carnes

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This study explores the lived experiences of Central American immigrant youth (N = 20) in two high schools located in the same Northeastern state in the U.S. This student sub-demographic represents one of the fastest growing populations in U.S. public schools (Suárez-Orozco & Todorova, 2009; Sibley & Brabeck, 2017). As the primary institutions charged with reception and social inclusion, schools shape trajectories of acculturation, bicultural identity development, and social integration for immigrant youth.

Public Opinion And The Morality Of Drug Use : Experimental And Time-Series Analyses, Benjamin Kuettel

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Trends in public opinion research suggest that Americans are becoming more liberal with respect to drugs. This research is limited by the absence of a reliable and valid indicator of drug sentiment, which inhibits our understanding of how and why public opinion toward drugs evolves over time. Recent studies also suggest that Americans are morally approving of drug use in certain contexts and are supportive of “harm reduction” or other progressive drug policies viewed as solutions to the drug war, but the underlying reasons as to why are not completely understood. This dissertation uses time-series analysis and two survey experiments …

Do Lawyers Inhibit Economic Growth? New Evidence From The 50 U.S. States, James V. Koch, Richard J. Cebula

Economics Faculty Publications

Whether the activities of lawyers might hamper economic growth has been hotly contested over the past three decades. Contradictory conclusions have flowed from evidence that typically has focused on the impact of lawyers on the growth rates of countries. Disputes over definitions and samples that vary among countries have colored portions of these debates. We surmount many of these issues by adopting a 50-state panel covering the period 2005-2018 for the United States and by utilizing widely accepted variables regarding economic activity and who is considered a lawyer. Further, we utilize two distinct measures of the activity of lawyers and …

A Qualitative Phenomenological Study Of Female Superintendents Within A Southern State: Perceptions Of Leadership And Career Paths Chosen, Stacy Fuentes

Doctor of Education Dissertations

This qualitative study examined perceived leadership styles and the chosen career path of female superintendents within a southern state. While teaching is an occupation chosen primarily by women, the role of superintendent is filled predominantly by men. The superintendent of a school district is responsible for meeting the daily operational needs of the district as well as the instructional needs of the students the district serves. A great deal of research has been done which focused on overcoming obstacles and barriers as women move toward becoming superintendents. The research within this study focused on providing insight into lived experiences and …

Do Not Use This Hashtag: Fat Acceptance (Mis)Information And Discursive Boundary-Work As Content Moderation On Instagram, Melissa Zimdars

Communication and Media Faculty Publications

The discussions concerning the use of #fatacceptance on Instagram are important for observing both the limitations of official content moderation on social media platforms and an emerging group of users who engage in unofficial content moderation through discursive boundary-work. Discursive boundary-work takes the form of users repeatedly centering "true" or "correct" information, referencing experts and studies, and claiming the "other" is misunderstanding and misusing information or spreading (mis)information. However, these boundary-work as content moderation practices are not just about delineating between truth and falsehood; they are about users building and reinforcing norms of use, groups, relationships, and identities as well …

Scheming: The Consulting Criminal Of The Vices, Drew E. Craddock

Theology Projects & Theses

Scheming is a multifaceted perversion of character that is often found in the person who has enough knowledge to understand what is good but has not inculcated the habits that would allow them to properly pursue a virtuous end. The schemer, acting from the vicious root of pride, is deluded into thinking that their self-serving ends are not only permissible but morally preferable. Scheming is defined by its five essential aspects: collusion with a capital vice, self-deception of the agent, operation from a place of vulnerability, movement of action from passion to malice, and ever-growing need for greater challenge.

Equitable Access To Voting Practices In Marginalized Communities, Ryan Bergman

Social Justice | Senior Theses

For two hundred years Americans have had to fight for the right to vote, yet it is still an ongoing challenge for many communities, the Latinx community in particular. In this study I analyzed what factors determine an individual’s access and participation in the voting process, focusing on the Latinx community in the Canal District of San Rafael, who are impacted by the barriers intended to limit their ability to vote. This study used a mixed methodology to understand these factors with the aim of providing guidelines for supporting marginalized voters. In addition to using qualitative data from interviews with …

The Digital Divide: The Path Towards Digital Inclusivity, Angelica Gonzalez Almanza

Social Justice | Senior Theses

The gap between those Americans who use or have access to ICTs and those who do not is referred to as the digital divide (PACEs, 2002). The pandemic has increased dependence on technology and exacerbated the digital divide, which perpetuates existing systems of racism and poverty (Early et al., 2021). In this study, a mixed-method approach was conducted to understand what digital literacy skills parents need to overcome the digital divide and support their child's education. Specifically, the study explored how the program Impact Technology training has affected parents' involvement with their child's education. There were 175 Latinx parents that …

Making A List: Teaching Prospecting In Sales Courses, Alexander Milovic

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

The importance of prospecting cannot be overstated in the sales discipline. The authors introduce an exercise that allows students to develop this skill by identifying and developing a detailed prospecting list with data gleaned from real-world contact information. This project can be executed both stand-alone or as an introduction to a larger-scale sales project. Additionally, this project can be delivered beyond the classroom in a workshop-style format to assist student organizations/clubs achieve their goals (e.g., fundraising, corporate outreach). Empirical results are shared, as well as qualitative student feedback, to demonstrate the exercise’s effectiveness for teaching this vital concept.