Digital Commons Network^™

The Ethical Imperative To Shift Toward A More Equitable Literary Education, Eleanor L. Bryant

Honors Theses

Choices governing canon formation have material, emotional, and intellectual consequences. Within canon formation, authors of different social identities, consistent with macrosocial power differentials, are unequally valued and shape cultural consciousness about which texts are aesthetically and intellectually valuable. It’s important to recognize canon formation as a process of unequally distributing cultural capital and knowledge production. The strategies and imperatives outlined here are basic first steps toward utilizing the classroom as a site to counter misogyny, racism, classism, colonialism, and homophobia. This project aims not only to deepen understanding of the sociological conditions of canon formation but also to impose an …

Implementation Of A Droplet Interface Lipid Bilayer System For Electrical Characterization, Olivia J. Ziemer

Honors Theses

Lipid bilayers are the fundamental structural framework of cell membranes, providing cells with both protection from the environment and interaction with the surrounding environment. Experimental investigation of lipid bilayers and embedded protein channels often involves the formation of an artificial membrane within an electrical circuit. The focus of this project is to implement and verify the functionality of a lipid bilayer characterization technique known as the droplet interface bilayer (DIB), with emphasis on cost-effective system design. To achieve this, the amplifier and software from the ELEMENTS black lipid membrane (BLM) kit were repurposed to reduce the cost of implementing a …

Bottles, Butterflies, And Biomass: Recycled Glass Sand, Microbial Additions, And Herbivory Effects On Milkweed Growth, Kealey Skinner

Honors Theses

Plant-soil-microbe interactions are integral components of ecological networks and drive ecosystem function from the bottom-up. Whereas herbivores regulate ecosystem function from the top-down, having opposing and potentially complementary effects on ecosystem function. My thesis sought to understand how below-ground microbial communities contribute to herbivore preference and plant biomass across varied soil substrates. My thesis asked: how do substrate and soil microbial communities influence herbivore preference and plant biomass accumulation on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)? To address this question, seedlings of A. incarnata were sown in 2.5 cm wide × 10 cm deep pots filled with either natural beach sand or …

Luz E. Herrera, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty CVs

No abstract provided.

Continuous Symmetry Discovery And Enforcement Using Vector Fields With Application To Time Series And Image Data, Benjamin D. Shaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Machine learning powers many technologies we use every day, from image classification in computer vision to analyzing time series data such as sensor readings or financial trends. One way to make these systems smarter and more reliable is by using symmetry, meaning patterns that remain unchanged under certain transformations, such as rotations for images or uniform changes in signal amplitude for time series. Discovering these patterns can improve understanding of data and help build models that perform well in new situations. 

Current methods for finding symmetry often rely on large neural networks and are limited to simple transformations like stretching …

Social And Institutional Factors Influencing Restoration Decisions In Sagebrush Plant Communities In The Great Basin, Carmen Calzado-Martínez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Sagebrush landscapes of the Great Basin in the western United States have changed dramatically over the past century. Invasive grasses, repeated wildfires, and past land-use practices have made it increasingly difficult for native plant communities to recover once they are damaged. Most restoration efforts occur after disturbances such as wildfire, when ecosystems may already be severely degraded. An alternative approach is proactive restoration, which aims to strengthen ecosystems before major damage occurs. 

This dissertation examines whether proactive restoration strategies could realistically be used in sagebrush rangelands and what factors influence their adoption. The research combines three complementary approaches. First, interviews …

Does Psychosocial Stress Moderate The Association Between Indicators Of Vascular Health And Cognitive Performance: An Examination In Native Hawaiian - Pacific Islander And Non-Nhpi Older Adults, Maddy Mills

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Late-life cognitive decline and dementia that are unrelated to normal aging are a source of major global health concerns. Vascular risk factors, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes, along with psychosocial stress, are well-established risk factors for cognitive decline. However, no research has explored how these variables interact to influence cognitive performance in older adults. Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islanders (NHPI) face disproportionate rates of vascular risk factors linked to cognitive decline, yet this population has been historically underrepresented in health research. As a result, limited evidence exists regarding how these factors collectively impact cognitive performance in this population. This …

Enhancing Evidence-Based Practice Decision-Making Among Practitioners In Adult Disability Service Settings, Aubrey Vance

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBA®s) working in adult disability services often face challenges such as high caseloads, limited oversight, and restricted resources, which can make it difficult to use individualized, research-supported interventions. Although evidence-based practice (EBP) is central to applied behavior analysis, many practitioners receive little training on how to integrate research evidence, client values, and clinical judgment into their decision-making. This study examined whether BCBAs could be effectively trained to use a structured decision-making framework based on the EBP model by Slocum et al. (2014). Using a multiple baseline design, we evaluated the effects of Behavioral Skills Training (BST) …

Developing And Improving Digital Image Correlation (Dic) Techniques For Challenging Environments, Prasenjit Dewanjee

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Understanding how materials and parts deform during testing is crucial for creating safer and more reliable engineering systems. Engineers need to measure not only how much a part deforms, but also where deformation concentrates before any damage or failure happens. Digital image correlation (DIC) is a camera-based, non-contact measurement method that tracks surface motion and deformation across a whole area. It is particularly useful when traditional contact-based measurement techniques cannot withstand harsh conditions or capture enough detail. This dissertation develops optical methods to improve DIC in three challenging measurement situations. First, a shortwave ultraviolet lighting technique is developed to reduce …

Assessing Geomorphic Change From Large Wood Additions In An Intensively Monitored Watershed, Alexander Walt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Rivers across the American West are under stress. Over time, human activities have decreased riparian vegetation and removed naturally occurring large wood from fallen trees and beaver dams. Overgrazing, wetland drainage, and artificial barriers like levees and berms have further changed these ecosystems, leaving behind simple channels that lack varied habitat for aquatic species.

Efforts to restore rivers have made some progress, but many projects are small in scale and focus more on reshaping the river rather than restoring the natural processes that keep it healthy. This study evaluates a different approach—Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration (LTPBR)—which works with nature to rebuild …

The Practice Of Inclusion: Indigenous Knowledge And Ethical Design, Kate E. Van Der Zalm

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Indigenous Knowledge is a cumulative body of practices and beliefs developed by Indigenous communities through generations of interaction with the natural environment. This knowledge offers valuable insights for caring for the land in sustainable and respectful ways but is not fully considered in modern planning and design practices. This research examines how Indigenous Knowledge is currently understood and used within landscape planning and design firms in British Columbia, Canada. Using a combination of existing research and interviews with design professionals and Indigenous participants, the study explores where Indigenous Knowledge is being applied, where challenges exist, and what opportunities remain for …

Faith And Doubt: Exploring How We Interpret The World, Amber Mccuen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

This collection of four fictional short stories explores questions of belief—and practice of belief—in four separate contexts. The first story, “Little Marie,” follows a young girl who’s made her own system of belief created by correlation. The second story, “Last Days,” sees a woman return to her childhood home which has been overcome by the hoarding habits of her paranoid, fundamentalist Christian mother. The third story, “Graduation,” takes place at a divinity school graduation and explores the strength of both social influence and unspoken rules within closed groups. The final story, “Away From the Ninety and Nine,” follows a cult …

Kapwa Across Contexts: Acculturation And Enculturation In Filipino American Identity At Home And In School, Jared Jamias

Education (PhD) Dissertations

Kapwa Across Contexts: Acculturation and Enculturation in Filipino American Identity at Home and in School examines how Filipino American identity is shaped across two primary sites: K–12 schooling and the Filipino American home in Southern California. Centering first-generation Filipino immigrant parents and their U.S.-born second-generation children, this qualitative study is guided by AsianCrit, Culturally Responsive Methodologies (CRM), and Nadal’s Filipino American Identity Model. Using narrative inquiry, six Filipino American family units (6 children; 8 parents) participated in individual and joint dyad interviews and Culturally Responsive Musical Inquiry (CRMI), in which families co-composed an original song. Findings indicate that K–12 schooling …

The Legitimacy Of International Law: A Kantian-Rawlsian Account, Taeyang Lee

Philosophy

This paper aims to answer the question of whether international law has legitimacy and value despite the absence of global centralized coercive enforcement and whether the concept of legitimacy developed in domestic law theory can be applied to international law. By avoiding the two extremes that claim that international law is nothing more than a non-binding agreement, or that it requires the centralized enforcement of a world government, I will defend a middle position that explains the moral binding force of international law when it satisfies conditions of legitimacy. Drawing on Kant's Universal Principle of Right and Ripstein's three defects …

Examining Institutional And Personal Barriers To Women's Participation In The U.S. Foreign Service In Comparison To Scandinavian Countries, Isabella R. Thompson

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

What explains women’s underrepresentation in the United States Foreign Service? The United States Foreign Service Act of 1980 claims that the foreign service needs to be “truly representative of the American people throughout all levels.” Women also constitute the majority in such fields as political science and international relations, which often lead to a career in foreign service. If there are no legal obstacles to women’s entry into foreign service and women are the majority in the education systems that lead to a career in foreign service, then why are women not participating? Existing explanations focused on structural factors such …

Off-Label Neuroimaging, Jane Campbell Moriarty

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal And Regulatory Considerations For Post-Trial Access To Maintenance Of Beneficial Investigational Neural Devices, Alexandra L. Foulkes, Erika Versalovic, Amanda R. Merner, Gabriel Lázaro-Muñoz

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Memoir: The Brain, Neuroethics, And Bioethics, Leslie C. Griffin

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Nobody Reads Books Anymore:" Challenges, Opportunities, And Recommendations For The Book Publishing Industry In A Digital World, Nathan D. Provencher

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the current challenges and opportunities facing the book publishing industry in the digital era. Although recent data suggests a decline in reading for pleasure among U.S. adults, industry revenues remain relatively stable, indicating that traditional measures of reading do not fully reflect industry performance. This thesis examines how digitization influences key aspects of the book publishing industry, including production, marketing, and consumption. Using a combination of secondary research and an interview with a self-published author, this thesis analyzes the impact of digital technology on the industry. The findings indicate key challenges, including increased competition for consumer attention, …

Campaign Finance And Democratic Integrity: Studying The Effects Of Campaign Finance On Elections, Abigail C. Johnson

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Using data collected from the Stanford Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections (DIME) this paper examines the connection between campaign finance results in independent expenditures. Focusing on 2022 and 2024 United States Senatorial election cycles, this research investigates whether or not female and male senatorial candidates receive higher or lower rates of supportive and opposing funding and how such funding effects the electoral outcomes of female candidates. Through logit regression analyses and descriptive statistics, like histogram and distribution graphs conducted in RStudio, this research measures how financial backing from outside groups affects probability in Senatorial primary electoral …

The Unitary Executive And The Federal Reserve, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court may soon embrace an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution that would significantly expand the power of the president over federal administrators and invalidate key provisions in dozens of federal statutes. A critical question is whether this interpretation — known as the unitary executive theory (UET) — would also render unconstitutional central bank independence (CBI), an arrangement where a country’s monetary policy is formulated by a semiautonomous body of experts insulated from partisan political pressure. Several justices have suggested that it would not, and a growing scholarly literature has proposed ways for the Court to distinguish the …

Metrics Not Thresholds: How To Regulate Ai And Other Expert Methods For Use In Criminal Investigations And Proceedings, Rebecca Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

Should regulators set performance thresholds for AI tools used in the criminal legal system? This Article draws on U.S. evidence law for guidance. Its answer is ... don’t. Instead of gatekeeping with ex ante performance thresholds, regulators should require or incentivize metrics of reliability that can be clearly communicated to end-user decisionmakers.

U.S. Shareholder Activism: Convergence With Japan, Nobuhisa Ishizuka

Faculty Scholarship

To many observers long accustomed to slow, incremental change, the current boom in shareholder activism in Japan comes as a surprise. The opening for U.S.-style activists was created by market conditions that eventually resulted in policy changes that attracted significant numbers of foreign investors. However, even the current market would not have emerged without a parallel evolution in U.S. hedge-fund tactics, which gradually shifted over a number of years to a sophisticated and more nuanced approach, one based on partnership and dialogue with target companies, in contrast to adversarial relationships and public campaigns. This article attempts to place current trends …

Black Labor Matters, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

Black and organized workers increasingly find themselves threatened by two key outside forces: one seeking to stop anti-racism efforts via diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices and the other curtailing employees’ union organizing. This Article argues that a response must be grounded in uniquely local strategies by two specific worker coalitions. One coalition–the New Black Workers Movement (NBWM)–arose from Black Lives Matter civil rights protests in 2020 that captivated the workplace and heightened awareness about anti-Blackness and concerns of systemic racism. The other coalition–the New Labor Workers Movement (NLWM)–developed in 2020 as a workplace response to a global pandemic that …

Do We Really Have The Right To Breathe Clean Air?, Rebecca Bratspies

UC Law Journal

Setting environmental standards involves judgment calls about what level of protection is “adequate,” what technical measures are “feasible” and even what level of pollution is consistent with “clean air, clean water and a healthful environment.” On his first day in office, Trump drove a truck through those judgment calls by repealing all the executive orders related to racial justice, environmental justice, and climate change that had been guiding agency exercises of discretion. Since then, his Administration has done its best to gut environmental protections—repealing long-standing regulations and abandoning customary decision practices. Overall, the Trump Administration has created a regulatory void, …

“The State V. The State:” Feuding Prosecutors And The Battle Over Post-Conviction Concessions, Dana Bazelon

UC Law Journal

One of the persistent questions of criminal law is how prosecutorial authority is allocated among different sovereign entities: Courts and scholars have wrestled time and again with questions of how criminal enforcement power should be divided between federal and state law enforcement. But the balance of power between state and local prosecutors has received far less attention, in large part because, until recently, the allocation of authority has been remarkably consistent: The overwhelming majority of state law enforcement power, by statute and by custom, has been concentrated in the hands of local prosecutors. In most states, state attorneys general have …

Transgender Rights Federalism: Protecting Gender-Affirming Care In State Courts, Julia Hunter

UC Law Journal

In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court rejected a landmark equal protection challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. In doing so, the Court substantially hindered or, at worst, entirely foreclosed federal equal protection challenges to gender-affirming care bans. Many Americans consider the Supreme Court the final arbiter of their constitutional rights. For decades, they would have been correct—when the Court was consistently expanding fundamental liberties, there was little incentive to look elsewhere for protection. But in eras of federal rights retrenchment, state courts have shown a willingness to step forward and interpret their constitutions independently and …

Global Tax Decluttering, Shu-Yi Oei, Diane M. Ring

UC Law Journal

Major global players—most prominently the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Union—have recently begun advocating that countries “declutter” their tax systems to tidy up, repeal, or eliminate pre-existing domestic anti-abuse tax rules. The reasoning is that these country-level rules are now duplicative or burdensome in light of a new global tax agreement spearheaded by the OECD and G20 and multilaterally agreed upon in 2021 by over 140 countries. Yet, this new multilateral regime is still in the process of being rolled out and is entirely untested.

In this Article, we examine this recently emergent “tax decluttering movement” …

Responsive Rigor And Strategic Care: Faculty Praxis For Holistic Student Success In The Community College, Jennifer Kelley

Library Scholarship

This qualitative study examines how community college faculty conceptualize, communicate, and enact academic rigor and care in their teaching practice. While post-pandemic debates have positioned rigor and care as opposing forces—evident in the "Rigor Wars" that framed care as performative laxity and rigor as gatekeeping—community college faculty successfully integrate these practices to support holistic student success. This research addresses critical gaps in higher education scholarship, which has studied rigor and care separately, focused primarily on four-year institutions, and overlooked faculty perspectives on how integration occurs in practice. Drawing on a single-case study of 38 faculty members at a large Midwestern …

Collaboration And Betrayal: Pius Xi And A Changing World, Nathan B. Higgins

Honors Scholar Theses

From the negotiations over the 1929 Lateran Accords to the start of World War II in 1939, the Holy See delicately navigated a turbulent diplomatic period. In the preceding century, the Catholic Church saw much of its temporal power decline as European states became more secular, and the pope lost the Papal States during the Risorgimento. Amid the decline in station, the rise of atheistic communism in Russia, Mexico, and Spain posed an existential to the Church, which Pope Pius XI would challenge during his pontificate. To confront this threat, he would work alongside Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany …