Digital Commons Network^™

Institutionalizing Normality: Disability, Productivity, And Higher Education, Ashley Dirzis

Student Theses

This thesis examines how capitalism and neuronormative domination shape the structures and values of academic institutions, affecting faculty, students, and research subjects alike. By privileging productivity, conformity, and efficiency in the pursuit of income, universities often marginalize those who diverge from normative standards of thinking, behavior, and embodiment, particularly disabled individuals. Drawing on Marta Russell’s Disability and Capitalism and the shaping of disability by capitalist systems, Robert Chapman’s notion of the "Empire of Normality" and Jay Dolmage’s concept of the retrofit from Academic Ableism, this paper analyzes how academia reinforces ableist norms. It explores the realities and barriers that …

Primary Healthcare Teams Diabetes Self-Management Education, Joseph Uke Mha, Msn, Rn

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Background: Primary healthcare teams (PHCTs) comprising physicians, nurse practitioners, physician associates, certified nutritionists, and clinical pharmacists—are essential in managing diabetes and its complications. Due to the complex and chronic nature of diabetes, a standardized approach is necessary for effective diagnosis, treatment, management, and referral to specialty care.

Objectives: This project aimed to assess and improve primary healthcare teams' knowledge of diabetes self-management education (DSME) related to treating and managing diabetes in veterans receiving care at the Community-Based outpatient clinic (CBOC) in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

Methods: The adapted Michigan Diabetes Knowledge Questionnaire and pre- and post-surveys were …

Sustainable Roots: Utilizing Historic Technologies For Modern Housing, Abigail Yeagley

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Viewed through a post-humanist lens, this thesis explores the reconciliation of indigenous, historic, and contemporary climate technologies to design housing that exists in harmony with the environment. Addressing the dual crises of housing scarcity and climate change, the project challenges Western post-industrial approaches, embracing Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) as a sustainable alternative. This thesis uses the AIA Framework for Design Excellence as a foundational guide but simultaneously critiques its scope, seeking to adapt and extend its principles to better align with Posthumanist housing principles. The design responds to specific climate conditions, analyzed using the Koppen-Geiger model, to ensure resilience, community …

Impact Of A Mobile Mindfulness-Based Intervention On Burnout And Intent To Leave Among Registered Nurses In A Clinical Setting, Kevin A. Proctor Mha, Bsn, Rn

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Background: Burnout among nurses is a persistent problem facing the healthcare industry and contributes to the projected shortage of nurses in the future. Nurses are at high-risk for suffering from burnout due to high prevalence of workplace stress. Exploring means to address and reduce burnout among nurses is a priority for every healthcare organization.

Objective: This project implemented a mindfulness-based program delivered via mobile phone application (app) and evaluated the app feasibility and impact on self-reported symptoms of burnout and turnover intention among registered nurses.

Methods: Nurses from two medical-surgical inpatient units in one acute care hospital were invited to …

Climate Resilient Development Concepts And Local Realities: Challenges Surrounding International Initiatives, Local Jurisdictions, And The Implications Of Geographic Scale, Joe Budd

Dissertations & Theses

Climate-based discussions have been occurring for decades and have almost always become political lightning rods. Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expanded on previous dialogue related to infrastructure and development, articulating a new concept called Climate Resilient Development or “CRD.” However, CRD remains a somewhat elusive and undefined proposal, and often requires historical context or further research to fully conceptualize in a local setting. In Wyoming, the complex mixture of jurisdictions and legal rules guiding local governments are difficult to untangle and rarely contemplated in the aggregate. Wyoming counties still operate under a form of Dillon’s Rule, while municipalities …

2025 Medical Student Research Day Abstracts, George Washington University

GW Research Showcase 2021-2026

The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences research showcase is designed to highlight the breadth of research and scholarly activity that students have accomplished during their education at The GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences. All students are invited to present research regardless of the area of focus. Abstract submissions represent a broad range of research interests and disciplines, including basic and translational science, clinical research, health policy and public health research, and education-related research.

This is an opportunity for all students to showcase their work through poster sessions and selected oral presentations. Awards will be …

Ghosting The Crowd, Andrew A. Schwartz

Washington and Lee Law Review

Crowdfunded companies are legally bound to provide investors with an annual report—but most don’t. This “ghosting of the crowd” violates federal securities laws and raises the risk of opportunism by entrepreneurs, who are more prone to misbehave if no one is watching. Most ominously, it threatens the very viability of the investment crowdfunding market, as investors who are ghosted by one company are less likely to invest in another.

This Article reports on the embarrassing record of noncompliance with the annual report rule imposed by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (“JOBS”) Act of 2012 and Regulation Crowdfunding, and proposes a …

The Misfortune Of Attending School While Black In A Fifth Circuit State, Shelley Ward Bennett

Washington and Lee Law Review

Tens of thousands of children, including disproportionate numbers of Black children, are hit in school every year. More than 50 percent of these students live in the Fifth Circuit states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Decades of government data, including the Department of Education’s most recent reports, reveal that Black students receive alarmingly inequitable rates of corporal punishment, demonstrating this education practice to be a legal form of institutionalized racism.

This Article uniquely focuses on the archaic discipline practice’s effects on Black students in Fifth Circuit states. Fifth Circuit law addressing students’ rights in corporal punishment cases has developed into …

De-Policing: An Updated Empirical Analysis Of Crime And Federal Police Reform, Griffin Edwards, Stephen Rushin

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article builds on prior work by empirically analyzing the effect of federal intervention in local police departments on crime and clearance rates, using updated data and methodologies.

Congress passed 34 U.S.C. § 12601 (formerly 42 U.S.C. § 14141) in 1994 to give the United States Attorney General the authority to seek equitable relief against local and state law enforcement agencies engaged in patterns or practices of misconduct. Since its passage, the Department of Justice has investigated and intervened into dozens of American police departments, including some of the largest police departments in the country. Federal intervention represents one of …

Unraveling The War Powers Resolution’S Role In Cyber Warfare, Zach Irwin

Washington and Lee Law Review

The evolution of warfare in the digital age has transformed the battlefield. Conflicts are fought with advanced technology, and traditional combat activities grow increasingly obsolete. This shift raises a critical question: Has the existing legal framework, including foundational war powers legislation, kept pace with this technological transformation? In exploring the governance of cyber warfare under the War Powers Resolution, this Note begins by examining the unique characteristics and devastating potential of cyber warfare. The analysis then turns to the War Powers Resolution, providing a historical overview of its enactment, a textual analysis of its provisions, and an exploration of how …

Plastics, Carbon, Politics, And Experimentation In Environmental Governance, Donald T. Hornstein

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

In this Article, I discuss new developments on waste reduction involving plastics and continued social experimentation in greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, especially as framed in two just-concluded, major international negotiations. In doing so, I describe the search for next-generation policies on waste reduction, including, but not limited to, extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs, along with newly announced policies on carbon offset markets as they relate to GHG reduction. In each case, society is on the verge of what movie producers might call “remakes” with EPR and other waste-reducing programs replacing first-generation recycling efforts and newly designed carbon offset markets replacing, …

Uterus Didelphys Bicollis Bicolpos —A Case Report, Felix Oindi, Felix Nyagaka

Obstetrics and Gynaecology, East Africa

Uterus didelphys refers to a congenital uterine anomaly that occurs due to failed fusion of the paired Müllerian ducts. It is characterized by two separate noncommunicating uterine horns each with its cervix and fallopian tube. Duplication may be limited to the uterus, cervix or also involve the vagina. Here, we present a case of a 27-year-old primigravida incidentally diagnosed during pregnancy, followed up with cervical cerclage at 13 weeks due to a short cervix and had preterm delivery via cesarean section at 35 weeks. She had a successful pregnancy outcome and an uneventful postnatal course. Uterus didelphys is associated with …

“Gli Scheletri Della Dittatura”: Fascist Art, Architecture, And Monuments In Modern Italy, John "Jack" Moore

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

When Italy reconstituted itself as a republic in 1948, it inherited the art, architecture, and monuments that were constructed under Fascism. Many of these artifacts contained inherent Fascist imagery and were made to exalt the regime, but Italy’s postwar government – known as the First Republic – neglected to systematically confront them. This mirrored the First Republic’s approach to shaping Italy’s memory of Fascism, as the government established an anti-fascist narrative without addressing the country’s support for the regime. During the 1980s, notions of anti-fascism began to fall alongside the political power structure upholding them. This coincided with the rise …

Church Doors And Hospital Doors: The Interrelationship, Azubuike Chukwubumnobi Okeke, Samuel Obiajulu Ike

Great Commission Research Journal

This study examines the place of medical evangelism as a means of church expansion in modern Nigeria. It is a retrospective cross-sectional investigative study involving data collection from the Good Shepherd Specialist Hospital’s anonymized patient records. The Good Shepherd Specialist Hospital is in Enugu State in southeastern Nigeria. Over 100,000 patients sought medical care in the hospital during a period of 19 years. Seventy-four percent had spiritual care provided by a person of the same faith. Most of the respondents came from within the Enugu metropolitan area. Using the church planting ministry of the Chapel of His Resurrection within the …

Pastors Of Smaller And Larger Churches Face Different Challenges: Empirical Evidence, William Ingersoll, David R. Dunaetz

Great Commission Research Journal

This study seeks to expand our understanding of the differences between the challenges faced by pastors of smaller churches and the challenges faced by pastors of larger churches. Pastors of North American churches (N = 347), generally with a theologically conservative orientation, responded to an online survey indicating how difficult they perceived each of 79 challenges to be. In general, evangelism and retaining youth were the most difficult challenges. However, clear distinctions were found between pastors of smaller churches and pastors of larger churches for over one-third of the challenges. For example, pastors of larger churches found that adequately addressing …

Comparative Performance Analysis Of Cryptographic Workloads Across Cloud Providers: A Multi-Language Study On Faas And Iaas Platforms Dataset, Jeremiah Webb

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Cloud computing has become a relatively new paradigm for the delivery of compute resources, with key management services (KMS) playing a crucial role in securely handling cryptographic operations in the cloud. This paper presents the microbenchmark of cloud cryptographic workloads, including SHA HMAC generation, AES encryption/decryption, ECC signature/verification, and RSA encryption/decryption, across Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) in conjunction with KMS offerings from Ama- zon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure to conduct a comparative performance analysis. The methodology involves the AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) and the Bicep language to deploy AWS Lambda Functions and Azure Functions, respectively, to …

Approximations Of Koopman Operator Semigroups, Ibrahem Al Jabea

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The main purpose of this dissertation is to study approximation methods for nonlinear systems using Bernhard Koopman's Global Linearization Method or Sophus Lie's method of continuous transformation groups. This approach enables the application of linear semigroup methods to a nonlinear system by focusing on the dynamics of the observables of the states, rather than directly studying the dynamics of the states. In this dissertation, we studied the pointwise semigroup and introduce the modified space $C_m(\Omega)$ and the modified Koopman-Lie semigroups. We use a splitting operator and outline a systematic approach for approximating the pointwise Koopman-Lie semigroup flows \begin{equation*} t\to T(t)g(x) …

A Mechanistic Understanding Of The Effect Of Staphylococcus Aureus Vras Histidine Kinase Single-Point Mutation On Antibiotic Resistance, Liaqat Ali, Salima Karki, Gunavanthi D. Boorgula, Amir Mekakda, Brittnee Cagle-White, Shrijan Bhattarai, Robert Beaudoin, Aryanna Blakeney, Sanjay Singh, Shashikant Srivastava, May H. Abdelaziz

Pharmacy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Bacterial genomic mutations in Staphylococcus aureus have been detected in isolated resistant clinical strains, yet their mechanistic effect on the development of antimicrobial resistance remains unclear. Resistance-associated regulatory systems acquire adaptive mutations under stress conditions that may lead to a gain-of-function effect and contribute to the resistance phenotype. Here, we investigate the effect of a single-point mutation (T331I) in VraS histidine kinase, part of the VraSR two-component system in S. aureus. VraSR senses and responds to environmental stress signals by upregulating gene expression for cell wall synthesis. A combination of enzyme kinetics, microbiological, and transcriptomic analyses revealed the mechanistic effect …

Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, And Conditional Pacifism, Gregory L. Bock

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian pacifist who believed Jesus Christ taught nonviolence, yet Bonhoeffer was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. How did Bonhoeffer justify to himself his participation in the plot? This essay makes the argument that Bonhoeffer, influenced by Soren Kierkegaard, distinguishes between ethics and acts of faith, suggesting the possibility that Bonhoeffer believed he was responding in faithful obedience to the direct call of God to participate in the plot despite the fact that this conflicted with the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount.

Understanding Firn Dynamics: Modeling And Microstructure From East Antarctica, Ilyse Horlings

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Glacier ice is formed from the accumulation of snow and its compaction through a transitional material called firn. Firn dynamics are fundamentally influenced by climatic factors, such as temperature and snow accumulation rate, and so are crucial for understanding a number of cryospheric applications. For example, ice-sheet mass loss contributions to sea-level rise from repeat satellite-altimetry observations depend on calculating firn density and its evolution. Past atmospheric gases in ice core bubbles are often younger than the surrounding ice, and their exact age depends on how firn closes off interconnected pores to become impermeable. Models often estimate bulk properties, such …

Adversary Complaint Charitable Immunity

Catholic Dioceses in Bankruptcy

No abstract provided.

Torture And The Yemen Civil War, Case Western Reserve University School Of Law

Yemen Accountability Project (YAP)

No abstract provided.

Her Fundamentals: Justice Abella And Section 2(B) Of The Charter, Jamie Cameron

Articles & Book Chapters

Justice Abella’s legendary aspirations for human rights all but defined her jurisprudence, and under s,2 she earned praise elsewhere for her opinions on religious freedom (s.2(a) of the Charter) and the right to strike under s.2(d)’s guarantee of associational freedom. Apart from Doré v. Barreau de Québec, her s.2(b) jurisprudence on freedom of expression has attracted less scholarly attention. This article highlights Justice Abella’s leadership under s.2(b) in protecting expressive freedom’s democratic values, developing a more robust form of proportionality balancing under s.1, and advocating for doctrinal recognition of freedom of the press and media as an independent …

Lincoln, Slavery, And Race: Tracking Change Over Time, Charles C. Clow-Levesque

GLI MA in American History Student Works

Abraham Lincoln's views on African slavery and race changed over time.

Bargains From Baltimore: Presidential Politics And The National Union Convention, Harold S. Post

GLI MA in American History Student Works

This paper examines the complex political dynamics leading to the National Union Convention of 1864 and the pivotal decisions surrounding Abraham Lincoln's renomination for president and Andrew Johnson's unexpected vice-presidential nomination. It explores how the internal fractures within the Republican Party, including tensions with Radical Republicans and War Democrats, shaped the convention's outcomes. By analyzing the interplay of political pragmatism, regional allegiances, and the wartime context, this study reevaluates the historiographical debate on Lincoln's role in Johnson's nomination. Drawing from primary and secondary sources, it challenges the notion of Johnson's selection as merely a "nomination of circumstance," instead framing it …

Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1860-1862 The Effects Of Military Occupation On Unionist And Secessionist Convictions, Riley P. Bogema

GLI MA in American History Student Works

Local histories of Civil War occupation provide a human face to the larger history of the American Civil War. The interactions between citizens and outside occupiers furnishes greater clarity and revelations on the human cost of conflict. It also presents greater evidence, either supportive or not, on broader arguments expressed in scholarly works on the Civil War. This work examines how prior attitudes towards the Unionism and secessionism were provoked during the process of military occupation. It argues that in the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the citizens’ allegiances and relationships were challenged by the occupation of both Union and Confederate …

The Overlooked Civil Rights Movement In South Carolina, Brooks R. Hammett

GLI MA in American History Student Works

This paper examines the overlooked but critical role of South Carolina in the Civil Rights Movement, highlighting the contributions of student-led activism, landmark legal cases, and influential grassroots leaders. Focusing on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) like Claflin University, Allen University, Benedict College, South Carolina State University, and the Avery Institute, the study explores how students catalyzed local movements through sit-ins, marches, and organized protests. It also investigates the legal and social ramifications of desegregation efforts following Brown v. Board of Education, including the resistance from public institutions and the emergence of segregation academies. Key civil rights events—such as …

Peer To Peer Inclusion School Improvement Plan, Michelle Davidson

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

As an educator with both classroom and special education experience, the impact that true inclusion can have on a child’s life. While inclusive education has long been recognized as a key to equity in our schools, many students with disabilities still face social isolation and limited participation in general education settings. This school improvement plan introduces a practical, research-supported peer-to-peer inclusion model aimed at increasing academic engagement, supporting social-emotional development, and creating a stronger sense of belonging for every student. With peer-reviewed studies and supported by proven best practices, the plan lays out a structured approach with clearly defined peer …

Student Inclusion In Least Restrictive Environment, Kelley Colling

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

When writing Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), the least restrictive environment (LRE) is typically defined as the general education classroom. However, this may not be held for all students. This research explores how LRE placement impacts academic performance and social engagement among students with disabilities. Through quantitative data collection and a descriptive research design, the study questions the assumption that inclusive practices are always the best approach. The findings indicate a statistical correlation between the amount of time spent in general education and the frequency of behavioral issues among students with disabilities. Specifically, data show that students exhibited more behavioral problems …

Looping Classrooms, Kelly Fitzgerald

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This inquiry-based Capstone Project examines the effects of classroom looping, where students remain with the same teacher across consecutive years. One or more teachers looped with their students from fourth to fifth grade. The study focuses on a group of students from a low-income and rural elementary school setting. Using student surveys and reflections, the researcher examines the influence of peer connections, student-teacher relationships, and overall student satisfaction with looping. A majority of the students reported positive experiences with looping, including positive relationships with their teachers, increased emotional support, and improved classroom identity. However, some students reported challenges such as …