Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Different Types Of Plastic And Rubbers Often Found In Healthcare Facilities On The Survival Of Potentially Pathogenic Bacteria, Ashely George

Honors Theses

This study focused on the survival of different species of bacteria on different types of plastics and rubbers found in healthcare facilities. The gram-positive coccus Staphylococcus aureus and the gram negative bacillus Escherichia coli, known to have importance as potential pathogens in healthcare facilities, were tested on two types of plastic (polyurethane and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)) and two types of rubbers (latex and nitrile) typically found on reusable healthcare surfaces. Known quantities of bacteria were aseptically placed on disinfected plastic surfaces in triplicate, air-dried, and then incubated at room temperature for 30 minutes, 20 hours, and 40 hours. After incubation, …

A Narrative Inquiry Of Selected Women’S Career Pathways To State-Level Leadership In Agriculture, Timothy Keown

All Dissertations

In this study, I used a qualitative narrative inquiry to examine stories from three individually selected state-level agricultural sector women leaders as they described their career paths to leadership roles. This purpose of the study was to address the problem of a lack of practical understanding of women leaders’ experiences in pursuing, achieving, and keeping leadership roles within the agricultural industry. The existing literature shows that women are less likely to hold an agriculture leadership role in their career. To establish the research question, I used feminist educational theory. This theoretical framework and the associated epistemology of narrative inquiry served …

The Creativity And Humility Guidebook: Fostering A Community Filled With Creativity Through Humility, Samantha Monaghan

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Although an often-under-explored cognitive skill, humility has an important relationship with a person’s creative capacity. Due to its inherent focus on honesty, flexibility, and openness, intellectual humility significantly increases an individual’s problem-solving abilities. This paper will detail the development of The Creativity and Humility Guidebook, which will be used to provide a thorough overview of both creativity and humility to the Roberts Wesleyan University community in order to equip faculty and staff with a fuller understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the two. Due to the turbulent climate of higher education in today’s world, coupled with the countless social, economic, …

Creative Problem Solving Using Visual Thinking, Jacob L. Ravnborg

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Creative Problem Solving Using Visual Thinking

This project explores the concept of visual and semantic thinking and how they can be incorporated into Creative Problem Solving sessions. Visual thinking is the ability to conjure mental images as part of the thinking process. This type of thinking is hard-wired into the human brain and can be seen in individual behavior and language. Meanwhile, semantic thinking is using language and grammar to convey meaning. It is a sequential process that depends on cultural and social references. The project argues that both types of thinking are essential and recommends specific guidelines for including …

Biomimicry And Forced Connections To Inspire Innovation, Bernadine Murray

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this project was to explore biomimicry and integrating forms of nature to generate unique ideas and possible solutions to problems. Four key components of this project were biomimicry, brainstorming, forced connections, and innovation to answer the question: What can I learn about imagination, forced connections, process, mindset, and innovation by copying aspects of nature or being inspired by nature? A Biomimicry and Forced Connections Design Journal contained conceptual designs based on nature or a challenge-to-nature searching for solutions. A Reflective Learning Journal included prior experiences and working on this project that contributed to my knowledge and insights. …

A Creative Cognition Framework For Generating Breakthrough Ideas, Coral Mcconnon

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Latest developments in creative cognition, largely informed by neuroscience, give us the ability to debunk pervasive and insidious creativity myths that get in the way of creating breakthrough ideas. This paper, through a review of creative cognition and neuroscience literature derives and synthesises a creative cognition framework focused on engaging metacognition of the creative process, activating creating drive, shifting perspective to gain insight, deploying defocused attention and finally, and only when the other dimensions have been established, sparking remote connections and getting to breakthrough ideas. As practitioners we need to ensure we are strategically deploying this framework, creating the time …

Building Resilience With Creativity: A Reflective Card Deck Prototype, Lakshmi Sithambaram

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The increasing complexity and adversity in today's world emphasize the need for resilience as a critical skill to navigate these challenges. The World Economic Forum identifies resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility as essential skills for thriving in the 21st century. But how can we intentionally develop resilience? Through this project, I explore the relationship between creativity and resilience and how creativity skills can be deliberately cultivated to build resilience. To achieve this, I developed a prototype of a reflective card deck that offers a unique approach to help individuals gain knowledge, make connections, explore their relationship with the skill, and …

Reflecting On Cross-Cultural Creativity In The College Classroom: An Investigation Into Gned 113 “Creative Genius”, Renee Sgroi

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This Master’s project uses Greenberger’s (2020) Guide to Reflective Practice to reflect on the design and delivery of the college-level creativity course, GNED 113, “Creative Genius” taught at Centennial College in Toronto, Canada, in order to examine possibilities for the inclusion of cross-cultural creativity approaches that meet the needs of a social justice and equity theoretical framework. A proposed heuristic for postsecondary creativity educators is also offered.

Exploring The Use Of Tabletop Role-Playing Games (Trpgs) To Highlight And Develop Creativity Competencies, Ryan A. Hill

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project explores how tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) are an underutilized mechanism for developing the affective skills that constitute the foundation of creativity and reinforcing the emerging concept of the creative experience through the application of experience design principles. Outlining the core concepts of creative experience, experience design, and gamification, along with the associated role of phenomenology and embodied cognition, the project establishes a case for the intersectionality of these elements in understanding how to develop creativity. Expanding further, the project explores what existing literature shows about TRPG ability to exercise and develop cognitive, psychological, sociological, and emotional competencies through …

Just Press Play: Designing Video Lessons To Teach Creativity Curriculum In Childhood Education, Gregory A. Mcclure

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project aims to create a scripted lesson consisting of a video lesson and a supplemental activity to facilitate creativity training in primary students. A larger goal is to develop a K-12 curriculum for Creativity and Creative Problem Solving. The scripted lessons and guided activities aim to educate 1st-grade students on creativity characteristics and foster foundational creativity skills. The project aims to alleviate teachers' burden by providing ready-made scripted lessons and videos with explicit instructions, requiring no prior content knowledge. The video lessons feature puppet characters, engaging students through spoken lessons, music, and movement. The follow-up activities, called Mactivities, are …

Reforming Illinois K-12 Public Education Through A Four-Pronged Approach, Seth Brooks

Senior Honors Theses

Public education in the United States has produced lackluster results in the past decades. Various forms of school choice have emerged in recent years to combat the poor results seen in the public education system, but these private schools are financially unattainable for many Americans. Bureaucratic overload, city corruption, inequities in funding, and frequent teachers’ strikes have certainly contributed to the destitute state of Illinois’ public education. In this thesis, the attainability of fiscal relief for Illinois families who choose alternative education and the necessity of the state in permitting such alternatives is discussed.

Current school choice policies in the …

Inside Out Apologetics: Engaging Cultural Narratives In Peninsular Malaysia, Xian Wei Hah

Senior Honors Theses

In the Western world, Christian apologists, missionaries, and thinkers who noticed the dangers of a cultural shift called postmodernism have developed many resources in recent years to engage it. This shift started from a time when it was impossible to not believe in God to one in which such faith is one among many possibilities. Meanwhile, extensive analyses of and apologetic engagement with the Eastern culture (Arabic, Confucian, and Southern Asian clusters) has been sidelined, with only limited resources to believers in those parts of the world. Unlike communities and cultures in the West, Eastern communities are shaped more by …

Infertility: An Evaluation Of Treatment Modalities And Ethical Considerations, Elise Ferenczy

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis reviews a variety of options for treatment of infertility, along with ethical considerations for each. The basis for ethical concerns will be primarily a biblical worldview, as the goal is to support Christian couples in decisions regarding infertility treatment. The biblical worldview is outlined to provide readers with an understanding of its core principles, and the Bible is used as the primary source for ethical discussion. The most common etiologies of infertility are outlined, followed by treatment modalities grouped by category. While some modalities present very few ethical concerns, others require careful consideration in many regards. Many of …

The Forest For The Trees: How A Local Arboretum Shapes Rhetoric And Discourse Surrounding Environmentalism., Cooper Day

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Environmental communication has been situated as a crisis discipline; however, scholars have recently explored how to shift to include care within the discipline. To be sure, this does not mean the crisis element should be abandoned, but, instead coupled with care so that environmental messages are positive and forward looking. This project contributes to this shift by looking at how green spaces are constructed to deliver messages of environmental care. More specifically, I analyze how Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, located about 30 miles South of Louisville, KY, has been constructed and works to promote environmental care in a variety …

The Influences Of The Public Health Care System And Education System On The Economic Growth Of Swaziland, Grace Greer

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Kingdom of Eswatini, also known as Swaziland, has one of the youngest populations in the world with over 70% of citizens being under the age of 18 years old. This creates a substantial opportunity for economic, social, and educational growth in a country previously plagued with diseases such as HIV/AIDS, poor health care infrastructure cutting off thousands from basic care, and an educational system with a very low attendance rate and an even lower graduation rate. By evaluating the root causes of such issues dating back to the colonial era there is an opportunity to reprioritize health care and …

'Taiwanization' In The Strait Conflict: Public Opinion's Effect On Peace Vs Conflict, Grant Smith

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

Since the election of Tsai Ing-wen, the Taiwan Strait Conflict has been rising in tension. Many scholars state that interdependence leads to peace; however, Taiwan and China extensively trade with one another, and peace has not occurred. To understand why the Taiwan Strait continuously suffers from conflict, one must explore mechanisms that can alter the effect of commercial interdependence on peace. In a democracy, this power would reside with the voting public. To understand why Taiwan’s trade relations have not led to peace, we must examine the Taiwanese public opinion. Most believe that peace has not come about because Taiwan …

Commodification Of Korean Culture In The West: Orientalism In The Era Of Modern Social Media, Samantha Giudice

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

South Korea, hereafter referred to as Korea, lies within the Korean Peninsula. It currently boasts a population of 53 million people residing within 38,724 square miles and a GDP of 1.811 trillion US dollars, making it the 13^th largest economy in the world. Since the Korean War to today Korea has turned into a major economic and cultural epicenter remaining at the center of technological advancements and pop culture production. While the exportation of this pop culture has allowed the economy grow at unprecedented rates, it has also led to less favorable interactions with Korean culture by people all …

Buried Treasure: What Gold Mining In Guyana Means For Indigenous Peoples, Traditional Knowledge, And Sustainability, Adoette Vaughan

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

Guyana’s Indigenous population, known as Amerindians, suffer greatly due to their lack of land rights and mining that infiltrates their remote territory in the country’s interior. Gold is the most lucrative export for Guyana, accounting for 10% of its GDP. However, the economic benefits and environmental and social costs associated with the industry have not been distributed evenly. Substantial environmental and social harms due to mining plague Amerindian communities. Mining activity fells vast stretches of forest, disrupts water channels and drives erosion through dredging. Mercury, used for gold amalgamation, seeps into river channels, poisoning fish and those who rely on …

Influence Of Jesuit Linguistic Manipulation On Guaraní Gender Norms In Colonial Paraguay, Anna Rumpz

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Language was just one of the ways that colonizers and natives had to interact in unfamiliar ways post-Columbus. Histories of colonization often emphasize the physically brutal aspects, such as disease, slavery, or warfare, but colonization is a holistically violent process that adversely impacts societies on multiple levels. In particular, this thesis focuses on the link between culture and language, with respect to Jesuit Spanish-Guaraní lexicons, as a framework to understand changes to gender roles and sexuality within the Jesuit missions of the early seventeenth century.

Genetic Mutations Of KCa2.3 And KCa3.1 Channels Affect Ca2+ Sensitivity, Razan Orfali

Pharmaceutical Sciences (PhD) Dissertations

The Ca²⁺-activated potassium channels K_Ca channels are a unique family of potassium channels activated by intracellular calcium. K_Ca channels are critical for maintaining K⁺ homeostasis and modulate several physiological processes, from the firing properties of neurons to the control of the transmitter release. The Ca²⁺ sensitivity of these channels allows intracellular Ca²⁺ to regulate the electrical activity of the cell membrane. Increased Ca²⁺ sensitivity of K_Ca channels caused by gain of function mutations (GOF) in the KCNN genes results in a broad spectrum of human channelopathies, including Zimmermann- Laband syndrome (ZLS), …

Physiological And Biochemical Responses To Salt And Cadmium Stress And It’S Amelioration By Exogenous Application Of Polyamines In Hybrid Poplar (Populus Nigra X Maximowiczii, Clone Nm6), Sanchari Kundu

Master's Theses and Capstones

The importance of nitrogen metabolism in plants in response to abiotic stress is widely known. Plant growth is severely hampered by abiotic stress, and appropriate nitrogen supply helps in plant growth and improves stress tolerance. At the same time, the regulation of nitrogen metabolism depends on the stress intensity. Abiotic stress can occur due to natural calamities, improper use of hazardous chemicals from industries, and careless environmental dumping of these chemicals. Hence, soils contaminated with hazardous chemicals are a significant threat to the development and yield of plants. Plants are affected by various abiotic stresses, i.e., salt, drought, and heavy …

Effects Of Tag Type And Environment On Migratory Success Of Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus Nerka) Smolts Through A Counting Fence, Tyler Parent

Master's Theses and Capstones

Understanding behavior and quantifying survival is vital to the conservation of anadromous fishes. Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) are one of the most economically and culturally important fish in the world, but some populations are declining, particularly in the Fraser River watershed in British Columbia, Canada. Within the Fraser River basin, Chilko Lake is one of the most prolific Sockeye Salmon populations, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has operated a counting fence at the mouth of the river for several decades to enumerate outmigrating smolts. Previous studies identified the clear water landscapes immediately downstream of the fence as high-risk, with …

Public Trust Guiding Principles And Action Plan, California Coastal Commission

State & Federal Reports and Publications

The goal of this document is to describe how the public trust doctrine relates to the Coastal Commission’s and local governments’ work on sea level rise planning under the Coastal Act. Section 1 presents a series of principles that guide the Commission’s and local governments’ work on this subject, and Section 2 sets forth next steps and research priorities for the Commission.

A Research Review Of Antidepressants For The Treatment Of Major Depressive Disorder, Connor Grady

Senior Honors Theses

The prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) in the U.S. has been significantly on the rise between 2015 and 2020, with adolescents and young adults (ages 18-34) contributing the most to this increase (Goodwin et al., 2022). The trend represents a disturbing downturn in the mental health of U.S. adults and warrants close attention and consideration. As the case number of MDD has continuously risen in the recent past, medical practitioners have been searching for more effective solutions. The techniques for combating the symptoms and curing the disease have varied, but one option consistently respected throughout the literature has been …

Anti-Vaccination: Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy And Its Consequences For Modern Public Health Policy, Joshua Bird

Senior Honors Theses

Modern vaccination is arguably the most significant medical achievement in human history. Through widespread vaccination, populations are no longer susceptible to diseases that plagued humanity for most of its existence (measles, rubella, smallpox). While vaccinations have largely shown themselves as safe and efficacious under most circumstances, small but considerable portions of the worldwide population reject vaccination for various social, religious, and political reasons. Research indicates that vaccine hesitancy spans all socioeconomic boundaries, affecting patients and their physicians. To explore the underlying themes of vaccine hesitancy and their relationship to loss aversion and omission bias, a study of various factors underlying …

Determination Of Effective Index Of Refraction Of Structured Materials (Photonic Crystals), Md Arafat Hossain

Theses and Dissertations

Photonic crystals have been widely studied by researchers due to their ability to control light propagation in all spatial directions. For example, 2D photonic crystals can be made of dielectric rods arranged in a square lattice. When light propagates through 2D photonic crystals, it experiences multiple scatterings by the crystal centers. The superposition of all scattered waves forms the transmitted field largely dependent upon the effective index of refraction of the structured material. We propose a method to determine the effective index of refraction through such materials with the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) model. We set up the interface of two …

Abort Mission: An Audio Drama, Maribel Salome Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations

The culmination of the audio drama and its critical introduction focuses on the current political climate regarding abortion rights, media manipulation, and governmental control as well as Latinx representation in art and media. The script follows two sisters on their mission to create an undetected, underground abortion service in a quickly evolving American dystopia.

Inspired by multiple works of both screenplays, audio dramas, and novels, my work is meant to inspire radical change to minorities in a world where hope is quickly fading.

Using Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning For Control Of A Quadrotor Dynamics, Edgar Adrian Torres

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents a quadrotor controller using reinforcement learning to generate near-optimal control signals. Two actor-critic algorithms are trained to control quadrotor dynamics. The dynamics are further simplified using small angle approximation. The actor-critic algorithm’s control policy is derived from Bellman’s equation providing a sufficient condition to optimality. Additionally, a smoother converter is implemented into the trajectory providing more reliable results. This paper provides derivations to the quadrotor’s dynamics and explains the control using the actor-critic algorithm. The results and simulations are compared to solutions from a commercial, optimal control solver, called DIDO.

The Past Close Behind Us: A Comparison Of Anti-Integrationists’ Rhetoric From The 1960’S With Anti-Critical Race Theory Rhetoric Today, Te'keyra Shelton

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research study is to analyze whether there are similarities and differences between how conservative organizations and leaders against integration in the 1960’s and Critical Race Theory today discussed and reacted to these advances for civil rights. While there are drastic differences in the context of both eras, arguments used to justify segregation are still used to justify banning Critical Race Theory. Through research on social movements, rhetorical framing, and white racial and conservative ideology, I was able to understand how these movements are structured to best gain success. And, through a comparative, content analysis of rhetorical …

Arbitrariness And Accountability In Plea Bargaining, Emma Brewer

Honors Theses

Justice is supposed to be a consistent, fair ideal of our society. If an individual is going to face punishment, there should be reasons why they receive the punishment they do, and two people who commit similar offenses should be punished similarly. These societal ideals are also embraced by the legal profession. Unfortunately, the current practice of plea bargains creates potential problems for our ability to satisfy that ideal of justice. Prosecutors have significant discretion in offering plea bargains. This discretion opens the door for potential arbitrariness. One way for prosecutors to combat that arbitrariness is by having a structured …