Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing The Professional Development Needs Of Traditionally And Alternatively Certified Career And Technical Education Teachers In Virginia, Natalie Ferand, Bradley Bowen, D. Brett Milliken

Journal of Research in Technical Careers

The Virginia Department of Education allows for various paths to teacher licensure. Teachers may graduate from an approved teacher preparation program or obtain a teaching license through alternative pathways. This study identified the professional development needs of traditionally and alternatively certified CTE teachers in Virginia by administering a statewide survey. The participants were divided into three groups: alternatively certified CTE teachers (Group 1), traditionally certified teachers in a non-CTE area and then received a CTE endorsement (Group 2), and traditionally certified teachers in CTE (Group 3). By comparing how teachers from each of these certification pathways reported their level of …

Offering A Manufacturing Curriculum Online To Rural Schools: The Case Of The Nimm Project, Raymond A. Dixon, Farjahan Shawon

Journal of Research in Technical Careers

This case study examined the extent to which the two implemented manufacturing pathways of the NIMM project successfully facilitated access and engaged high school students from rural regions in two manufacturing curricula. The program consisted of two tracks or career pathways for manufacturing technicians: Mechanical CADD technician and Electro-Mechanical technician. The Mechanical CADD program was delivered online, and the Electro-Mechanical program was delivered online and through a summer skills academy. Findings include, students showed less preference for CTE manufacturing courses in an online asynchronous format, CTE instructors need to be trained to teach online, proper IT infrastructure is needed for …

Wired For Degradation: How Post-Translational Control Of Inducible Camp Early Repressor Protein Influences Melanoma Fate, Melissa Rose Spigelman

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Melanoma is a highly aggressive form of skin cancer frequently driven by mutations in the BRAF gene, particularly the BRAFⱽ⁶⁰⁰ᴱ variant, which leads to sustained activation of the MAPK signaling cascade. Recent studies implicate the cyclic AMP (cAMP) signaling axis in melanoma progression and therapeutic resistance, highlighting the role of the Inducible cAMP Early Repressor (ICER), a transcriptional antagonist of CREB and CREM. ICER is downregulated during melanomagenesis and subject to post-translational regulation via phosphorylation and ubiquitin-mediated degradation. To investigate ICER’s functional relevance in vivo, e utilized a zebrafish melanoma model harboring brafⱽ⁶⁰⁰ᴱ, tp53−/−, and mitf−/−mutations, in which mitf expression …

Considerations And Techniques For Producing Urban Tree Canopy Maps Using Freely Available And Accessible Methods, Hugh Reed Ellerman

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Urban forests are valued as green infrastructure for the variety of benefits they provide across ecological, social, public health, and economic domains. To understand the distribution of trees, maps are required. Many methods of mapping tree cover use expensive and data-intensive datasets such as hyperspectral and LiDAR imagery, making these methods inaccessible to municipal forest managers. Variations in the modelling approaches of existing, freely available methods are not addressed in sufficient enough detail to understand the trade-offs implicit in these variations. Further, characteristics of urban tree canopy mapping (high spatial resolution imagery, heterogeneous urban environments, the importance of the tree …

Advanced Porosity Control Of Cp780 Galvanized Steel During Gas Metal Arc Welding With Pulsed Arc, Carlos Adrián García Ochoa, Jorge Alejandro Verduzco Martínez, Francisco Fernando Curiel-López, Víctor Hugo López-Morelos, Jaime Taha-Tijerina, Ariosto Medina Flores, Maleni García Gómez

Informatics and Engineering Systems Faculty Publications

This study investigated the control of porosity during gas metal arc welding with pulsed arc (GMAW-P) of complex-phase 780 (CP780) galvanized steel. Due to the Zn coating on this type of steel, porosity forms during welding as a result of Zn vaporization. The objective was to optimize the welding parameters to minimize porosity with a design of experiments using an L9 orthogonal array to analyze the effects of peak current (Ip), pulse time (tp), and pulse frequency (f) in high-speed welding conditions. The results showed that porosity was significantly reduced with a peak current of 313 A, a frequency of …

Disrupting Foundation Culture: Lessons In Learning To Share Power And Decision-Making, Sonia Caus Gleason, Tina Eshaghpour

The Foundation Review

There is much discussion of shifting organizational culture in philanthropies to share power and decision-making. However, examples of foundation learning endeavors to disrupt culture in service of systems change, racial equity, and responsiveness are less common.

Our article provides a window into the demanding work at The California Wellness Foundation and how internal collaboration and learning have led to progress in racial equity and power-sharing with communities. We focus on the introduction of Learning Labs, an action research model that framed and scaffolded the investigation of philanthropic terms and practices. This catalyzed collaborative decision-making within cross-functional teams while senior leaders …

Bridging The Digital Skills Gap: Positive Leadership In The Aerospace Industry 4.0, James Richard Robinson Ii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study explores how employees and leaders in a major aerospace manufacturing organization experience digital transformation in the context of Industry 4.0. As emerging technologies reshape manufacturing processes, organizations face a growing digital skills gap, particularly across a multigenerational workforce. This research focuses on how generational differences influence digital adaptation and how leadership approaches either support or hinder that process. Guided by the diffusion of innovations theory, the study involved semistructured interviews with 15 participants from four generational cohorts, representing IT, engineering, manufacturing, and operations roles. Findings reveal that trust, leadership style, and tailored training significantly shape how individuals …

The Dilemma Of The Black Airbnb Host: To “Whitewash” Or Not?, Akili C. Cooper Sr.

All Dissertations

This research investigated the effectiveness of Black Airbnb operators who whitewash their Airbnb listings for the purpose of building trust and ultimately increasing booking intention. In the housing industry, whitewashing is a practice of non-White homeowners removing their images from their homes to increase valuation. Prior studies on whitewashing focused on various subjects of the homeowners, including education and corporate professionalism. Since the introduction of the Airbnb digital platform in 2007, over 4 million Airbnb hosts have opened their doors to over 1 billion guests worldwide among which a growing number of hosts are Black.

This study used perceived congruence …

Perceptions Of Unstructured Recess And Classroom Behaviors In Elementary School Settings., Allison Shockley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The priority on core curriculum areas such as math and reading has resulted in limited physical activity and regular recess routines. With the increased time spent on core curriculum, teachers and administrators have shifted their focus towards standardized student testing achievement. This focus has resulted in limiting or doing away with unstructured recess with the hopes that students will gain more core curriculum knowledge. This dissertation will focus on educators' perceptions of elementary school student behavior with varying recess time structures. This study began by examining the history of recess while analyzing the trickled- down historical inequities elementary students experience …

What Happens To Soil And Native Plant Life After Removal Of Lonicera Maackii In An Urban Temperate Forest?, Sheryl A. Gipson Hammond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In evaluating the potential effects of nitrogen cycles and pH on plant diversity and richness after the removal of Lonicera maackii in a temperate urban forest in Louisville, Kentucky, data was collected including nitrogen, pH, canopy, stem count, and plant surveys. The cutting and treatment with chemicals to remove L. maackii were successful one year after the treatments, but legacy effects ensued about five years thereafter. Native diversity waned as monoculture proliferated in some areas, including second invasions of the invasive. It was expected that nitrogen and pH would explain the success (or lack thereof) of native plant response as …

Advancing Speech Intelligibility Assessment: Comparing School-Based Speech-Language Pathologists, Laypersons, And Speech Recognition Software., Hannah Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This non-experimental study utilized a convenience sample (N = 86) to investigate the comparability of school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs), laypersons, and speech recognition software in the assessment of speech intelligibility for children with phonological disorders. Eighty-nine percent of participants were female, and 92% were white. All participants completed a survey comprised of 25 audio recordings of single-word utterances from an AI-generated voice of a four-year-old male with a phonological disorder and were asked to select what word they believed was heard from a pool of 12 options. The survey also included a passage read by the same AI-generated voice, and …

Development And Functional Characterization Of Carbon Nanodot-Peptide Conjugates For The Treatment Of Bone Disease, Abigail Ali

Honors Theses

Carbon nanodots (CDs) synthesized from carbon nanopowder under acid oxidative conditions have unique bone-bind properties that could be exploited for theranostic purposes. In the zebrafish vertebrate model system, CDs bind to bone with high affinity and specificity, they don’t appear to bind to other tissues and they do not affect the bone physiology or animal viability. Thus, carbon-derived CDs could be developed for the delivery of pharmacological agents to bones to treat diseases such as osteoporosis. Biologicals such as peptides, proteins and antibodies are a new and exciting class of pharmacological agents that have been successfully used in treating complex …

Synthetic Modification Of Agrobacterium To Inhibit Plant Pathogenesis, Rosemala Agarwala

Honors Theses

Crown Gall disease caused by Agrobacterium is a leading cause of plant damage and current solutions used to prevent the disease are not as effective. This research aims to use a synthetic biology approach to design a plasmid that upregulates Curdlan, a molecule that activates plant defenses, when the bacteria senses a wounded plant. Thus this research uses a synthetic biology approach to develop a biocontrol agent for Crown Gall disease. This research also looks at the transferability of the sugar phenol sensing mechanism in Agrobacterium, which is needed for plant pathogenesis.

Reversing Residential Segregation In Richmond: Recommendations For A More Inclusive Future, Jacob Ellis

Honors Theses

Cities are dynamic, evolving reflections of our societies. The current built environment of Richmond, Virginia, is shaped by its stored history with zoning, which is inextricably linked to race. Since 1927, the City of Richmond, Virginia has had some form of a zoning ordinance in place, intended to create a system of de facto residential segregation. While the first zoning ordinance primarily focused on separating residential and industrial spaces in response to the City Beautiful movement and early 20th-century progressive ideals, zoning in Richmond quickly became a weapon of segregation and racism. As the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond …

‘King Of Infinite Space:’ Confinement And Identity In Hamlet & Contemporary Adaptations, Anna-Laura Houston

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the theme of identity confinement through the lens of Shakespeare's Hamlet and its contemporary adaptations, Fat Ham by James Ijames and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. At the core of this comparative study is Hamlet's paradoxical claim that he could be "a king of infinite space" were it not for his "bad dreams," a statement that encapsulates the tension between internal autonomy and external constraint. The thesis argues that Hamlet's sense of self is shaped-and ultimately fractured-by external demands, including his father's ghostly command for vengeance, the political corruption of Denmark, and an existential …

Shame On Us: The Democratic Costs Of Public Shaming, Elijah Han

Honors Theses

This thesis argues that contemporary public shaming—amplified today by the Internet and universal social membership—is unjustifiable because existing theories ignore its distinctly democratic harms. Defining public shaming as an intentional, collective act that weaponizes social opprobrium, I critique existing consequentialist and deontological defenses, showing they overlook how shaming erodes the conditions for democratic citizenship. Public shaming breeds mistrust, skews who gets to set social norms, chills political participation, radicalizes targets, and obscures what norms actually govern us; these six systemic costs undermine democracy and outweigh any social, economic, or moral benefits except in rare cases where public shaming averts existential …

Biophysical Characterization Of Thermophilic Branched-Chain Amino Acid Periplasmic Binding Protein From Thermotoga Maritima, Sky Marsicano

Honors Theses

Members of the periplasmic binding protein superfamily are involved in the selective passage of ligands through bacterial cell membranes. The hyperthermophilic eubacterium Thermotoga maritima encodes a putative periplasmic branched chain amino acid binding protein (TM1135). The gene was cloned into pET21a(+), overexpressed in Escherichia coli, purified using Ni-NTA chromatography, and confirmed with SDS-PAGE and MALDI mass spectrometry. Biophysical characterization of the protein was performed with fluorescence spectroscopy, absorbance spectroscopy, and circular dichroism experiments to investigate structural stability and ligand binding ability. Using circular dichroism, we demonstrate that TM1135 binds to the branched chain amino acids isoleucine, leucine, and valine, and …

Implications Of Acetylation And Phosphorylation On Metabolic Enzymes, Nour Fatema

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

All living things depend on glycolysis and the TCA cycle for energy production and metabolic control. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) such as acetylation and phosphorylation, which can change enzyme activity, substrate binding, and overall metabolic balance, tightly regulate these pathways. Diseases like cancer and metabolic problems are associated with disruptions in these alterations.

Serine phosphorylation and lysine acetylation are two of the many PTMs that are evolutionarily conserved processes that alter protein function. Previously thought to be a static histone alteration, acetylation is now understood to be a dynamic regulator of metabolic enzymes that modifies contacts, charge, and conformation. In response …

Survival Signature Estimation Using Optimization And Monte-Carlo Simulation For K ≥ 3 Classes Of Nodes On Two-Terminal Networks, Md Sazid Rahman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research develops an efficient approach to estimating survival signatures for two-terminal networks with more than two classes of components. Recently, the survival signature has gained substantial attention in the literature on network reliability estimation due to its unique separability property, which enables passing the network topology information independent of the failure distribution of the components. Following recent results from the literature, estimating the two-terminal survival signature by Monte Carlo simulation entails solving a multi-objective maximum capacity path problem on a two-terminal network in each replication. We adapt a multi-objective Dijkstra’s algorithm from the literature to construct the set of …

A Case Study Of Intercultural Competence And Perceived Career Coaching Effectiveness In Higher Education, Robert C. Ellis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the cost of a college education continues to increase dramatically, both policymakers and the general public have begun to question the return on investment in higher education. In response, post-secondary institutions have substantially invested in their career development offices in an effort to improve graduate career outcomes. Among the most widespread of the career services offered to college students is career coaching, which the literature supports as having a substantial impact on increasing starting salaries and job offers for new college graduates. Despite being more likely than their peers to utilize their institution’s career development offices, college graduates belonging …

Exploring The Relationship Between Technical College Faculty Members’ Length Of Teaching Experience And Their Moral Identity, William Abney

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the relationship between faculty members’ length of teaching experience and their moral identity at a technical college in the Southeastern United States. Utilizing a quantitative approach, the research aims to determine whether a significant correlation exists between an instructor’s tenure in postsecondary education and their moral identity, as measured by the Moral Identity Questionnaire (MIQ). Additionally, the study examines the potential moderating effect of gender on this relationship. Data will be collected through a Qualtrics electronic survey distributed to all faculty members at the college, ensuring anonymity and minimizing survey errors. The survey includes demographic questions and …

Spatial And Temporal Analysis Of Real Fluid Thermodynamics Nonlinearities On Turbulent Mixing In Supercritical Fluids, Roshid, S M Al Mamun

All Theses

The impact of thermodynamic nonlinearities on flow properties and turbulence was the focus of this study, which investigated the spatial and temporal dynamics of supercritical CO₂ turbulent mixing layers. Beyond their critical point, where parameters such as density, pressure, temperature, isothermal compressibility, and thermal expansion show significant gradients and fluctuations, supercritical fluids deviate sharply from ideal gas behavior. These nonlinearities have a major effect on turbulence and cause complex mixing behavior that has important ramifications for the machines that operate in supercritical environments.

The study explored the effects of local variations of important thermodynamic variables on the fluid dynamics in …

Supercritical Water Oxidation And A Preliminary Concept For Lunar Application, Sheldon Cameron Scott

All Theses

As the reach of space exploration extends further from Earth, the cost, time, and energy requirements necessary for life support of crewed expeditions exponentially increases. This makes the reclamation of resources paramount to the viability of such missions and will eventually become a major constraint for future destinations due to the expensive delivery of materials. Thusly, Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) has been proposed to meet the requirements for the recovery of potable water needed for the drinking, hygiene, laundry, and irrigation performed by astronauts. This technique utilizes supercritical water’s properties above 374°C and 22.1 MPa alongside oxidants to convert organic …

Unsupervised Machine Learning Techniques To Categorize Genomic Islands, Lijie Zhou

All Theses

Unsupervised Machine Learning (ML) techniques are powerful tools for identifying similarity patterns and can be utilized to categorize the data into related groups. This study showcased the applications of unsupervised methods, namely hierarchical clustering to carefully determine related groups of newly identified genomic islands (GIs). Genomic islands are mobile genetic elements integrated into bacterial chromosomes. Gis can impact the evolution of bacteria for example by carrying virulence or metabolic genes. Precisely identifying Gis calls for a sophisticated process which we recently implemented as an already-published tool called TIGER which stands for Target/Integrative Genetic Element Retriever (TIGER). TIGER identifies mobile DNAs …

The American Lowrider As A Form Of Art, Chad Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues that lowriders, a style of heavily customized vehicle deeply rooted in Chicano culture, ought to be recognized as a legitimate American art form. After establishing the historical and cultural background of lowriders, this paper identifies a cluster of essential aesthetic features which define lowriders, such as lowered suspension, custom wheels, elaborate paintwork, and opulent interiors. Several paradigmatic lowriders exhibiting these features are then examined against the background of various philosophical definitions of art. The analysis demonstrates that lowriders with their elaborate body modifications and paintwork do align with the essentialist views such as Clive Bell’s formalism and …

Evolutionarily Conserved Functions Of The Gene Frazzled In Midline Axon Guidance In Drosophila Melanogaster And Tribolium Castaneum., Piyasi Ghosh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Axon guidance in bilaterians is often controlled by various signaling pathways in the nervous system, which determine the fate of the axons if they cross the midline or not. One such pathway involved is the ligand-receptor pair Netrin (Net) and Frazzled (Fra), which is also known as the attractive pathway that promotes midline crossing axons in insects and other bilaterians. Orthologs of the pathway ligand Netrins and their receptors Frazzled [Fra] in insects and Deleted in Colorectal cancer [DCC] in vertebrates are widely conserved in bilaterians. How well these regulatory roles of the protein are conserved is poorly understood. In …

Cartographic Representation And Analysis Of Sand Dune Morphometry In Wadi Rum, Jordan, Grace Clark

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Situated in southern Jordan, near the Saudi Arabia border, Wadi Rum boasts a dramatic landscape of towering sandstone inselbergs and vast dune fields. The UNESCO World Heritage site is known for its cultural, historical, and physical uniqueness. Due to the hyper-arid environment and sandstone weathering, the region provides a perfect outdoor laboratory for aeolian research.

While research on aeolian processes has grown in popularity in the past century, there is a lack of conventional cartographic and visualization techniques in the field of aeolian studies. This project corroborates findings from influential aeolian researchers such as R.A. Bagnold while also implementing traditional …

Investigating Evolution Through The Lens Of Ai-Driven Protein Exploration And Phylogenetic Modeling, Mataya Duncan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent advances in computational biology, artificial intelligence, and sequencing technologies have enabled new perspectives for addressing longstanding questions in evolutionary biology. Increased computational power has made large-scale simulations feasible for investigating diverse aspects of evolutionary and phylogenetic modeling. Similarly, deep learning algorithms now allow for the prediction of reasonably accurate tertiary protein structures, unlocking the potential for investigating diversity and evolution of protein structure across a broad range of organisms. This thesis presents two studies that target different aspects of evolutionary inference from unique perspectives. Yet, the share an overarching goal of presenting new perspectives on the evolutionary basis of …

Application Of Ordinal Regression Models To Acquired Stress Resistance In Wild Strains Of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Carson Stacy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the application of ordinal regression to the analysis of semi-quantitative growth assays often used when comparing fitness for different strains of the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. For stress survival assays, yeast stress resistance is measured using an ordered survival score that ranges from 0 (no growth) to 4 (confluent growth). Traditional approaches to analyze this type of data either treats data as a nominal categorical variable or as a continuous numerical variable. These approaches risk loss of information or violation of testing assumptions. In contrast, cumulative logit ordinal regression uses the information contained in the order …

Wesleyan-Style Bands : A Pilot Training Program In The Local Church, Bailey D. Barkley

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.