Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 6121 - 6150 of 1104008

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

First-Turn Response Caching For Conversational Ai Agents Using Context-Aware Keys, Ankit Aggarwal Jul 2026

First-Turn Response Caching For Conversational Ai Agents Using Context-Aware Keys, Ankit Aggarwal

Defensive Publications Series

Conversational artificial intelligence systems may experience inefficiencies when processing high-frequency initial user queries, as routing repetitive requests to a backend generative model can lead to redundant computations and increased response latency. A response caching system can use pre-model and post-model execution callbacks to manage a cache, for example, an in-memory cache. For certain requests, such as qualifying first-turn requests, the system may generate a context-aware composite key from a user's query text, an agent's system instructions, and its available tools. If a matching key is found, a stored response can be returned, which may bypass a call to the backend …


Accelerating Emergency Call Retry By Inferring Bearer Deactivation From Ancillary Network Messages, Edison Chen Jul 2026

Accelerating Emergency Call Retry By Inferring Bearer Deactivation From Ancillary Network Messages, Edison Chen

Defensive Publications Series

Mobile communication systems may experience delays when retrying a failed emergency call during a network handover. These delays can occur when a user equipment (UE), such as a smartphone, smart watch, or vehicle communication system, waits for a network timer to expire to confirm resource release from a failed connection, particularly if a deactivation confirmation message is not received. A technique is described where a UE's communication modem can infer the deactivation of a failed bearer by analyzing ancillary network messages, such as a tracking area update accept message. The modem can parse an information element within this message that …


Artificial Intelligence-Driven Framework For Enhancing Risk Management In The Architectural Design Process In Egypt, Ayman Ahmed Ezzat Othman, Nadia Mohamed Algheetany, Fatma Othman Alamoudy Jul 2026

Artificial Intelligence-Driven Framework For Enhancing Risk Management In The Architectural Design Process In Egypt, Ayman Ahmed Ezzat Othman, Nadia Mohamed Algheetany, Fatma Othman Alamoudy

Mansoura Engineering Journal

The construction industry is crucial for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, it faces significant risks during the Architectural Design Process (ADP) that affect project quality, cost, schedule, and sustainability. Due to its limitations, traditional risk management (RM) is often inadequate for addressing these challenges. This study aims to develop a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven framework to enhance RM practices in Egyptian Architectural Design Firms (ADFs) through proactive RM and improved data-driven decision making. A mixed methods research approach was adopted to achieve the research objectives. A comprehensive literature review examined RM, ADP, and AI applications …


Design Of Reliability Acceptance Sampling Plans, Rathin Das Jul 2026

Design Of Reliability Acceptance Sampling Plans, Rathin Das

Doctoral Theses

A reliability acceptance sampling plan (RASP) is used for sampling and decision-making in the acceptance or rejection of a lot of products based on lifetime data obtained from a life test. In practice, censored life tests are employed due to limitations in cost, time, and other testing resources for the collection of lifetime data. This thesis develops the design of optimal RASPs under various censoring schemes and testing environments. Design of optimal Bayesian RASPs (BRASPs) are considered under interval censoring schemes (ICS) and hybrid censoring schemes using Bayesian decision-theoretic approaches. These models incorporate the adversarial relationship between manufacturers and consumers, …


Escaping The Cyberstorm: A Gamified Social Engineering Training Program, Noah Mcclanahan, Fadi Abu-Amara, Ali Khattab, Travis Jett, Andre Jackson Jul 2026

Escaping The Cyberstorm: A Gamified Social Engineering Training Program, Noah Mcclanahan, Fadi Abu-Amara, Ali Khattab, Travis Jett, Andre Jackson

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

In this research work, we explored the effectiveness of gamification in improving cybersecurity awareness and training users on targeted social engineering attacks. Traditional cybersecurity training focuses on lectures and videos. These training methods may not actively engage employees, which reduces their knowledge retention and ability to recognize social engineering attacks. This lack of involvement is a concern, as social engineering continues to be one of the most prevalent attack methods faced by end-users. A gamified training program, Escaping the Cyberstorm, was developed using the Godot game engine to address key challenges in spreading cybersecurity awareness. The game includes real-life …


Stop Blaming My Users: Illumination Of The Technocentric Mythos Bias, Ervin H. Frenzel, Richard Lightcap Jul 2026

Stop Blaming My Users: Illumination Of The Technocentric Mythos Bias, Ervin H. Frenzel, Richard Lightcap

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

 Abstract -This conceptual essay addresses the need for systemic and systematic transdisciplinary analytical techniques within cybersecurity and technical security. This conceptual essay is contingent upon recognition that cybersecurity is not simply technical in nature, it does not need an adversary, and more importantly it is based upon systems engineering and systems thinking.  The essay contributes a socio-technical attribution chain and field-specific ontology/taxonomy which distinguish user-triggered events from root causes, latent conditions, technical debt, validation failures, governance failures, and attribution bias before assigning responsibility to end users. It systematically defines an ontology inclusive of developer technical debt, organizational debt arising from …


Beyond Histone Demethylation: Mechanisms Of N‑Alkyl Consecutive Oxidations By The Non-Heme Fe(Ii)/2-Oxoglutarate Oxygenase Kdm6b, Simahudeen Bathir Jaber Sathik Rifayee, Sudheesh Devadas, Midhun George Thomas, Bhargav Varada, Ethan Sommer, Cassandra Talaba, Christopher Schofield, Christo Christov Jul 2026

Beyond Histone Demethylation: Mechanisms Of N‑Alkyl Consecutive Oxidations By The Non-Heme Fe(Ii)/2-Oxoglutarate Oxygenase Kdm6b, Simahudeen Bathir Jaber Sathik Rifayee, Sudheesh Devadas, Midhun George Thomas, Bhargav Varada, Ethan Sommer, Cassandra Talaba, Christopher Schofield, Christo Christov

Michigan Tech Publications

The nonheme Fe-(II)/2-oxoglutarate (2OG)-dependent histone demethylase KDM6B (JMJD3) has demonstrated a capacity for diversity in the oxidative transformations of N-alkylated lysine residues in histone H3 peptides; however, the mechanisms of such dealkylations, compared with standard KDM-catalyzed demethylations, remain unexplored. We implemented molecular dynamics and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics to investigate the catalytic strategies for the sequential oxidation reactions of KDM6B with different N-alkylated forms of lysine K27 in the H3 peptide chain, that is N , N -methyl ethyl lysine () and N -isopropyl lysine (). The results for sequential oxidations, which yield alcohol, aldehyde, and then carboxylic acid products, reveal …


Examining Curriculum Alignment: Utah Core Mathematics Standards And The Mathematics Vision Project/Open Up Resources, Jennifer Suzanne Young Jul 2026

Examining Curriculum Alignment: Utah Core Mathematics Standards And The Mathematics Vision Project/Open Up Resources, Jennifer Suzanne Young

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the alignment between the Utah Core Mathematics Standards (UCMS) and the Mathematics Vision Project/Open Up Resources (MVPOUR) curriculum for Secondary Mathematics I, II, and III, as well as the proportion of Utah secondary students potentially exposed to that alignment through district-level curriculum approval. Using a qualitative comparative case study design, UCMS were systematically compared to MVPOUR topic foci to identify horizontal alignment (standards addressed within the intended course), vertical alignment (standards addressed across courses), combined horizontal and vertical alignment, or lack of alignment. Alignment data were recorded using a spreadsheet-based content analysis and independently coded to support …


System Design And Validation Of Radio Astronomy Phased Arrays, Rebecca Shiu Haymore Jul 2026

System Design And Validation Of Radio Astronomy Phased Arrays, Rebecca Shiu Haymore

Theses and Dissertations

Modern radio astronomy instruments require a wide field of view and high sensitivity. To this effect, BYU and Cornell University have developed the Advanced L-band Phased Array Camera for Astronomy (ALPACA), a fully cryogenic 69 dual-pol dipole array that produces 80 beams on the sky with 305 MHz instantaneous bandwidth centered on 1500 MHz. Integration testing has demonstrated proper beamforming and calibration, and ALPACA has been commissioned as an all-sky monitor to search for bright transients. Commissioning testing for ALPACA measured an element system noise temperature of 24 K and a beamformed system noise temperature of 17 K, making ALPACA …


Childbirth Experiences Of The Bangladeshi Immigrant Women In South Florida, Tahsina Ferdous Jul 2026

Childbirth Experiences Of The Bangladeshi Immigrant Women In South Florida, Tahsina Ferdous

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This qualitative research was conducted among Bangladeshi immigrant women living in South Florida who have given birth here. Twenty Bangladeshi immigrant women were selected using the snowball sampling method from various cities in South Florida. The unit of analysis was the individual Bangladeshi immigrant woman, focusing on her experiences and behavior during pregnancy and childbirth. Semi-structured interviewing and case study methods were used for data collection. The results reveal the coping strategies and the navigation process of socio-cultural transition from non-mother to mother, and the Bangladeshi traditional views regarding beliefs, rituals, and practices of Bangladeshi immigrant women regarding their pregnancy …


Ole Miss Center Selects Inaugural Stem Teacher Leaders In Mississippi, Clara Turnage Jul 2026

Ole Miss Center Selects Inaugural Stem Teacher Leaders In Mississippi, Clara Turnage

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – The Mississippi STEM Education Alliance has selected 16 teachers from across the state to serve as the inaugural members of the National STEM Teacher Corps Pilot Program, an effort to improve science, technology, engineering and math education.


Toxic Relationships: Characterization Of A Putative Virally Encoded Toxin In The Thermophilic Archaeal Fusellovirus Ssv1, Jonathan C. Abshier, Patrizia L. Alpapara, Guasåli Tomokane, Kenneth M. Stedman Jul 2026

Toxic Relationships: Characterization Of A Putative Virally Encoded Toxin In The Thermophilic Archaeal Fusellovirus Ssv1, Jonathan C. Abshier, Patrizia L. Alpapara, Guasåli Tomokane, Kenneth M. Stedman

Center for Life in Extreme Environments Publications

Mechanisms for the maintenance of chronic viruses are poorly understood, particularly for archaeal viruses. Here, we identify the product of Sulfolobus spindle-shaped virus 1 (SSV1) ORF a291 as a putative virally encoded toxin required for growth inhibition but dispensable for viral replication and virion production. Viruses lacking ORF a291 replicated their genomes and formed morphologically normal spindle-shaped particles, yet failed to inhibit the growth of uninfected Saccharolobus solfataricus. Substitution of residues at a predicted N-terminal signal peptide cleavage site abolished growth suppression without affecting replication, suggesting that secretion is essential for toxin function. Despite primary sequence divergence among fusellovirus …


Integrated Construction Risk Assessment Framework, Felix Delmonte Jul 2026

Integrated Construction Risk Assessment Framework, Felix Delmonte

Mechanical and Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

An integrated risk assessment architecture for construction projects synthesizes data governance, BIM, Digital Twins, and hybrid analytics into a continuous feedback loop that links sensing, semantic modelling, probabilistic simulation, and organizational learning. The framework distinguishes aleatory from cognitive uncertainty and prescribes layered methods: Monte Carlo and Bayesian updating for measurable variability; fuzzy inference and consensus aggregation for linguistic and expert judgements; and graph-based discovery for dynamic cyber-physical topologies represented as time-varying graphs 𝐺𝑡. Governance primitives, aligned with ISO 19650, enforce provenance, interoperability, and staged readiness thresholds that prevent premature prescriptive outputs until model convergence criteria are met. BIM and GIS …


Adopting Cultural-Language Translation Technologies To Advance Equitable Older Adult Care, Abdolreza Akbarian, Rosanra Yoon, Mabel Ho, Vess Stamenova, Leinic Chung-Lee, Rui Hou, Josephine Pui-Hing Wong, Abdul-Fatawu Abdulai, Anoushka Anoushka, Andrew Marciniak Jul 2026

Adopting Cultural-Language Translation Technologies To Advance Equitable Older Adult Care, Abdolreza Akbarian, Rosanra Yoon, Mabel Ho, Vess Stamenova, Leinic Chung-Lee, Rui Hou, Josephine Pui-Hing Wong, Abdul-Fatawu Abdulai, Anoushka Anoushka, Andrew Marciniak

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Purpose: In this study, we aim to advance equitable access to culture-language-concordant care for older immigrants in long-term care (LTC) and homecare settings by examining current evidence and engaging interest holders in critical dialogue.

Background: Older immigrants with limited English/French proficiency experience language and cultural barriers that compromise safety, person-centred care, and social inclusion. Language translation technologies offer potential solutions, yet their acceptability, feasibility, and equity implications in elder care remain unclear.

Methods: Using Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and Joanna Briggs Institute’s Population-Concept-Context approach, we conducted a scoping review of empirical studies (2005–2024) on cultural-language translation apps and devices used …


Rethinking Learning From Incidents In Healthcare: A Safety-Ii Model Integrating Work-As-Imagined, Work-As-Done, And Work-As-Experienced, Nawal Khattabi, Axel Ros, Matt Carey, Aled Jones Jul 2026

Rethinking Learning From Incidents In Healthcare: A Safety-Ii Model Integrating Work-As-Imagined, Work-As-Done, And Work-As-Experienced, Nawal Khattabi, Axel Ros, Matt Carey, Aled Jones

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Healthcare organizations increasingly investigate patient safety incidents using systems thinking. However, even investigations that claim to adopt a systems approach frequently revert to linear, event-focused reasoning concluding on deviations and recommending further training. A foundational question remains unresolved: when an incident review identifies a "deviation", does this represent exceptional behavior or the system's typical mode of operation that generally succeeds under varying conditions but occasionally fails? Without this distinction, explanations for incidents tend to focus on individual non-compliance rather than understanding the everyday adaptations that enable care delivery in a complex adaptive system. Consequently, incident reviews that promote system learning …


Investigating Learning In Immersive Virtual Reality, Andrew Negrette Jul 2026

Investigating Learning In Immersive Virtual Reality, Andrew Negrette

Master's Theses

Students often struggle with learning challenging subjects throughout their education. This also tends to lead to lower enjoyment and science self-efficacy for learning. Some subjects may be better represented in 3-dimensional spaces utilizing immersive virtual reality (IVR). Recently, IVR headsets have become more accessible and affordable and therefore are in wider use. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether differences in science selfefficacy, enjoyment, presence and knowledge retention exist between IVR and controls on an ocean acidification lesson. I predicted that participants taking the lesson in IVR would score higher compared to a laptop on all measures, due …


Interpretable Wellness Prediction From Passive Wearable Sensor Data Using Large Language Models, Cheng-Huan Yu Jul 2026

Interpretable Wellness Prediction From Passive Wearable Sensor Data Using Large Language Models, Cheng-Huan Yu

Master's Theses

This thesis presents a unified framework for multi-target wellness prediction using passive wearable sensor data and large language models (LLMs). The study integrates two complementary paradigms: prompt-based regression and representation-driven classification. In the first stage, structured wearable representations derived from daily physiological signals are used to prompt LLMs to predict stress, fatigue, sleep quality, and readiness. Two input representations are evaluated: statistical summaries and hybrid inputs combining statistical summaries with raw sensor values. To improve interpretability and prediction consistency, the second stage introduces a representation-centric classification framework in which wearable signals and wellness targets are discretized into categorical levels. Multiple …


Moral: Multimodal Reasoning For Autonomous Language Models With Sensor-Grounded Spatial Bev Rendering, Ambarish Govindarajulu Kaliamurthi Jul 2026

Moral: Multimodal Reasoning For Autonomous Language Models With Sensor-Grounded Spatial Bev Rendering, Ambarish Govindarajulu Kaliamurthi

Master's Theses

Autonomous-driving vision-language models describe scenes fluently but reason poorly about metric, safety-critical spatial relationships because they do not read sensor geometry in a grounded way. This thesis presents MoRAL (Multimodal Reasoning for Autonomous Language Models), a two-stage fine-tuning pipeline that teaches a compact 2-billion-parameter VLM to decode a physics-encoded Bird’s Eye View (BEV) representation – LiDAR distance as color, object class as cluster shape, radar Doppler velocity as directional wedges – and then trains it to reason over that representation for driving decisions. Stage 2 then fine-tunes on 57,696 teacher-generated chain-of-thought examples across eight question types, using Cosmos-Reason2-8B as teacher …


Superresolution Spectroscopy Of Atomically Thin Semiconductors And Moiré Heterostructures, Chien-Chu (Charity) Wei Jul 2026

Superresolution Spectroscopy Of Atomically Thin Semiconductors And Moiré Heterostructures, Chien-Chu (Charity) Wei

Master's Theses

Atomically thin semiconductors and moir’e heterostructures provide an important platform for studying quantum phenomena shaped by reduced dimensionality, interlayer coupling, strain, and local structure. In MoS2, the transition from bulk to monolayer form changes the material from an indirect to a direct band gap, while stacked and strain-engineered systems can produce spatially varying moir’e potentials on nanometer length scales. Because these effects are highly localized, conventional far-field optical spectroscopy is often limited in its ability to resolve them directly. This thesis explores superresolution vibrational spectroscopy as a route toward probing local behavior in atomically thin semiconductors and moir’e heterostructures. Far-field …


Remote Reality: Exploring The Outcomes Of Psychological Contract Breach On Telecommuting Employees, Karen L. Ng Jul 2026

Remote Reality: Exploring The Outcomes Of Psychological Contract Breach On Telecommuting Employees, Karen L. Ng

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between psychological contract breach (PCB) and attitudinal outcomes, specifically job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intent, within the telecommuter population. Results of an online survey administered to 213 participants revealed strong support of all hypotheses: PCB was negatively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment and positively associated with turnover intent. Exploratory analyses revealed moderating effects of remote work frequency and organizational tenure with PCB and attitudinal outcomes. High-frequency remote workers and longer-tenured employees showed stronger negative reactions to PCB, indicating their amplified vulnerability to breaches. Age and gender showed …


The Zeal Instruction Set Architecture, Joseph A. Gerani Jul 2026

The Zeal Instruction Set Architecture, Joseph A. Gerani

Master's Theses

The Instruction Set Architecture of a CPU (Central Processing Unit) determines what type of instructions the CPU is able to understand, how those instructions are encoded, and what it should output upon receiving those instructions as input. There are currently three popular ISAs meant for the consumer market: x86, RISC-V, and ARM, as well as a fourth that mostly now exists in the server market by the name of Power. One of the most important parts of an ISA is for engineers to be able to understand it and make use of it. If an ISA is too complicated, nobody …


The Moderating Role Of Flexible Work Styles On The Relationship Between Relational Identification And Affective Organizational Commitment, Justine Lee Jul 2026

The Moderating Role Of Flexible Work Styles On The Relationship Between Relational Identification And Affective Organizational Commitment, Justine Lee

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore the moderating role of flexible work styles (in-person, hybrid, and remote) on the relationship between relational identification and affective organizational commitment (AOC). The study utilized an online survey to collect data from 69 respondents. The results demonstrated that although relational identification and AOC were related, this relationship was not moderated by flexible work styles. The three different work styles of in-person, hybrid, and remote work did not show differing affects for a subordinate’s relational identification and the strength of their AOC. The results emphasize that organizations can foster strong relational identification to …


Data Augmentation For Vision-Language-Action Models: Bridging Vision And Language, Miaosen Zhou Jul 2026

Data Augmentation For Vision-Language-Action Models: Bridging Vision And Language, Miaosen Zhou

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on real-time task execution and object detection for autonomous robots through dataset augmentation. We propose a data augmentation approach to address dataset imbalance in Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models across both image and text modalities during the fine-tuning process. The proposed method takes an image as input and generates a structured textual description using a prompt engineering strategy to augment the textual input. The generated augmented text includes key elements such as the task goal, scene description, reasoning, and execution plan, along with other relevant contextual information. This enriched representation improves the quality of the training data and supports …


Towards Neural Network Optimization: Addressing Issues With Corrupted Weights Within Models, Nick Najafizadeh Jul 2026

Towards Neural Network Optimization: Addressing Issues With Corrupted Weights Within Models, Nick Najafizadeh

Master's Theses

Neural networks are a recent popular technology inspired from human brains. Much of their popularity arises from how they excel in reasoning and logic, and are generally rather efficient in their tasks. With those strengths, they are frequently used in transportation and business among many other fields. However, neural networks have many factors that can deteriorate their performance, one of the most critical being weight corruption. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to detect and handle them as soon as possible so as to minimize the negative impact on a network’s performance. The optimization of neural networks would be especially …


Accessibility Fairness Practices In Ai Applications For People With Disabilities, Megan Gross Jul 2026

Accessibility Fairness Practices In Ai Applications For People With Disabilities, Megan Gross

Master's Theses

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) improve the lives of people every day with tools like the auto-captioning of videos, improved screen-reader capabilities, and advanced mobility control through speech. However, are all groups of people benefiting from AI or are some being overlooked and left out? Although AI tools made for people with disabilities (PWDs) have improved their lives, AI for the general population generally ignores the experiences of PWDs, making them unable to interact with and benefit from technology. This research evaluates ChatGPT and Gemini in Gmail for usability fairness and analyzes how current regulations and development processes fail to …


Diagrammatic Methods For Calculating Correlation Functions In Low-Dimensional Quantum Gravity, Nicholas A. Parrilla Jul 2026

Diagrammatic Methods For Calculating Correlation Functions In Low-Dimensional Quantum Gravity, Nicholas A. Parrilla

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates connections between random matrix theory and low-dimensional quantum gravity through the spectral form factor (SFF), a well-studied function that characterizes correlations in the eigenvalue spectrum of an operator. In random matrix ensembles, a feature of the SFF known as the “ramp” is governed by universal spectral correlations, and in Jackiw–Teitelboim (JT) gravity this regime is due to the double-trumpet wormhole geometry. We study the connected correlation functions underlying the SFF using combinatorial, diagrammatic methods from a mathematical formalism known as second-order free probability theory, where they are expressed in terms of annular noncrossing permutations. To access a …


Rewriting The Calculus 3 Workshop At San José State University, Moorea Lippert Jul 2026

Rewriting The Calculus 3 Workshop At San José State University, Moorea Lippert

Master's Theses

Calculus 3 at San José State University is a very important course for any student pursuing a STEM degree. However, the course is very challenging, so the university offers a supplemental workshop course for Calculus 3 students. Unfortunately, this workshop has not aligned with modern research in math education. This thesis documents efforts to recreate the workshop to better align with this modern research.


Pipeline Optimization Of Agentic Llms For Text-To-Sql, Peter Conant Jul 2026

Pipeline Optimization Of Agentic Llms For Text-To-Sql, Peter Conant

Master's Theses

Current database interfaces limit users’ interaction to those with technical skills, creating timely roadblocks for non-technical professionals. Text-to-SQL aims to simplify database interactions by translating natural language questions into database queries, but long-standing challenges like question understanding, question-schema linking, and SQL generation have held the field back. In the AI era, foundational LLMs prove to be very capable of question understanding SQL, perform well in Schema Linking, Generation, and Evaluation tasks. However the cost to run these model is a hurdle for many organization with low funds and resources. Text-to-SQL solutions often operate across large enterprise size databases with, and …


Early Failure Detection In Web Navigation Agents Via Closed Sequential Pattern Mining, Sergio Talavera Jul 2026

Early Failure Detection In Web Navigation Agents Via Closed Sequential Pattern Mining, Sergio Talavera

Master's Theses

LLM-based web navigation agents fail on the majority of tasks while consuming substantial computational resources before failure becomes apparent. This thesis investigates whether closed sequential pattern mining on the first K steps of agent execution traces can predict task failure early enough to enable meaningful computational savings with interpretable justification. We develop a two-phase system: an offline pipeline that symbolizes agent traces, extracts K-step prefixes, mines closed patterns via BIDE+, and ranks them by failure precision; and an online detector that matches live executions against the resulting pattern library. We evaluate on 1,544 MiniWoB++ traces across three open-weight language models …


The Great Return In Higher Education: Employee Perspectives Survey, Tonya P. Person Jul 2026

The Great Return In Higher Education: Employee Perspectives Survey, Tonya P. Person

Master's Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed traditional workplace structures across higher education, accelerating the adoption of hybrid and remote work arrangements. In the post-pandemic period, as universities implement or refine mandatory return-to-office (RTO) policies, understanding employee perspectives remains critical for informed decision-making. The present exploratory study investigated staff experiences with hybrid work, anticipated reactions to a five-day in-office mandate, and preferences for future work models within a large public university. Data were collected from 155 university staff members through a 12-item survey assessing perceived benefits of hybrid work, expected impact of a mandatory in-office requirement, and preferred work arrangements when given a …