Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Role Of Online Spaces In Understanding Young Adult Mental Health Attitudes: Internalizes Stigma, Help Seeking Behaviors, And Mental Health Centered Content, Harley Thomas

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Mental Health is an ever-rising concern in the United States, with many people experiencing some form of mental health concerns. One new tool used to fight the mental health crisis has been online content on social media sites. Few studies have been done to see the actual effect of the rise of mental health content and terminology used online, especially through the lens of those who have lived experience. We conducted an online survey via Prolific to gather quantitative and qualitative data from 287 young adults in the United States, ages 18-25, to examine their exposure to mental health content, …

Challenging Myths In Speech-Language Pathology: A Scientific Review Of Augmentative And Alternative Communication (Aac) Use, Bilingualism, And Late Talking, Mariah Morris

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Persistent myths within the field of speech-language pathology continue to influence clinical decision-making and contribute to biases experienced by both providers and clients. This scientific review examines common misconceptions surrounding late talking, bilingualism, and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) by evaluating current evidence-based research. Specifically, this review addresses three central questions: Do children outgrow late talking? Does bilingualism cause language delay in children? Does AAC hinder speech development? 

An analysis of multiple peer-reviewed studies revealed little statistical support for the belief that bilingualism or AAC use causes language delays. Instead, research indicates that factors such as limited access to language-rich …

Exploring The Experiences Of Adult Children Of Parents With Addiction: A Qualitative Support Group Approach, Brooke Stanton

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Adult children of parents with addiction often grow up having to navigate emotional instability, inconsistent caregiving, and long-term relational impacts that continue into adulthood. Many individuals report limited access to supportive care and spaces where they can share their stories. This capstone project addresses the gap by designing and facilitating a support group specifically for adult children of parents to build connection and healing. Through this qualitative study, participant feedback, and analysis, this project examines how structured peer support can create meaningful change for this population. The following paper outlines the development of the group, the theoretical foundations that guided …

Learning From 2002: County-Level Economic Analysis Of The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics And Implications For Utah 2034, Ronan Spencer

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This paper examines economic and distributional impacts and the existing literature on the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics to inform policy recommendations for the upcoming 2034 Utah Olympic Games. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) framework on county-level data from 1995 to 2006, we compare Utah host counties to Colorado counties. Results indicate that the Games generated an average of 1,084 Leisure and Hospitality jobs per host county, suggesting approximately 5,420 total jobs across all five host counties. We saw a positive but marginally significant increase in tourism and hospitality GDP of $37.2 million relative to Colorado controls (p=0.078). We also …

Behind The Smile: A Qualitative Study On Dentist Burnout And Workplace Satisfaction In Cache Valley, Luke Thomas Hatch

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This qualitative research study examined satisfaction, stressors, and burnout among dental professionals in Cache Valley, Utah. Eight practitioners at various points in their careers were interviewed with a range of specialties including general dentistry (n = 3), pedodontics (n = 3), oral and facial surgery (n = 1), and orthodontics (n = 1). Analysis of the interviews showed that level of clinical autonomy was a primary factor influencing burnout levels. Stress levels in more experienced practitioners and owners tended to be lower than those who worked in multiple practices (multi-doctor) or with corporations. Individuals in these environments reported higher levels …

Discovering Strategic Behaviors In The Floor Using Reinforcement Learning, Kevin Parks

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

This project investigates how a reinforcement learning (RL) agent can develop territorial strategies in a highly stochastic, grid-based approximation of the television game show The Floor. I design a custom Gymnasium-compatible environment that models the show’s core mechanics on a 10×10 board, including probabilistic duels governed by player skill, adjacency-constrained attacks, chain-attack rules, and a Randomizer mechanism for selecting new initiating players. A Maskable Proximal Policy Optimization (Maskable PPO) agent is trained under several reward configurations and evaluated against stochastic non learning opponents as well as random and “always pass” baselines.

Across experiments, the best-performing configuration achieves a win …

Vernacular Religiosity: Liminality, Mentorship, And Communal Reciprocity In Women's Religious Communities, Megan J. Miller

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

This thesis is a study on women’s religious communities, and the vernacularized traditions practiced by the women themselves from a folkloric perspective. Examining the creative and meaningful ways women find to interact with their faith on a daily basis, this thesis proposes a natural cycle of religious participation which allows the women to move between active and passive participation roles within their religious communities, and creates equitable spaces for women by relying on the communal reciprocity of the group.

By focusing on individual women and their experiences and belief practices as part of a larger community of religious practice, this …

Beyond Morphology: Testing Molecular Assessment Of Macroinvertebrate Communities In Alpine Streams Of The Teton Range, Usa, Joshua Vollmer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Alpine streams and the macroinvertebrate communities that reside within them are threatened by the rapidly changing climate. Long-term monitoring of these communities is required to understand how they are changing and to predict their future trajectories. Historically, stream monitoring and assessment has been performed by collecting and identifying individuals using their morphological traits. However, in alpine aquatic ecosystems, distinct macroinvertebrate species often lack the morphological differences that allow them to be distinguished. DNA metabarcoding, an alternative method for identification which uses genetics instead of morphological differences, is not impacted by this issue, and therefore, may be better suited for alpine …

Motivational Systems In Education That Encourage Academic Achievement & Student Leadership, Hannah A. Lockhart, Angela Elsass Ed.D.

Curriculum and Instruction Undergraduate Honors Theses

This comprehensive literature review examines the impact of school-based motivational systems on students’ academic achievement, leadership development, and overall engagement. Drawing on contemporary motivational frameworks, motivation is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct shaped by internal psychological processes and external environmental factors. Particular emphasis is placed on autonomy, competence, relatedness, and belongingness as key mechanisms underlying intrinsic motivation, persistence, and leadership capacity. This extended review of literature addresses a gap in empirical studies on the implementation and effectiveness of specific motivational programs in diverse school settings. Additionally, it also addresses the influence of developmental stages and recent educational disruptions, including the …

Extracting Wildfire Influence From Natural Streamflow Variability To Inform Post-Fire Peak Flow Predictions, Haley Anne Canham

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Wildfire is a natural process, however, wildfire occurrence, severity, and size is increasing globally along with large storms. Despite the expectation that floods will be larger after wildfire, a large range in post-fire flood size has been observed. This creates challenges for emergency managers to prepare for flooding in areas where wildfire might occur. Aside from wildfire, many other factors influence the size of floods, making it difficult to isolate the influence of wildfire. This work finds that factors including wetter versus drier years and seasons can alter the size of a flood, effectively hiding the influence of wildfire. Additionally, …

Reading Cache Valley Rhetorics: Towards A Composition Pedagogy Of Place, Dax Gove

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

“Reading Cache Valley Rhetorics: Towards a Composition Pedagogy of Place” proposes that place—one’s immediate locale—is an essential element of ecocritical writing pedagogy. There are constant interacting rhetorical constructions of meaning within any given place across texts from the different groups who have lived there. In these local texts, the evidence of a rhetorically mediated reality is evident in the stark differences between natures and cultures—meaning is rhetorically constructed, down to the meaning of place and people. This project reads texts local to the author’s immediate locale, Cache Valley, Utah, from white LDS settler and Indigenous Shoshone rhetors in order to …

Teaching In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study Of Teachers' Lived Experiences, Nicholas Ricks Harris

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing education, creating new opportunities for teaching and learning while also raising challenges for teachers. Although schools are encouraging the use of AI, little is known about how teachers experience this transition or how it affects their professional roles. This study explored teachers’ lived experiences as they begin working with AI, using a phenomenological research approach to understand both what they encounter and how they make sense of those experiences. Through interviews with teachers who have recently engaged with AI in their practice, the research identifies themes that reveal opportunities, challenges, and shifts in professional …

Examining Middle School Girls' Self-Efficacy Changes During A Design-Based Engineering Unit, Emily Lehnardt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Drawing on Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, this exploratory multi-case study examines how engagement in an engineering designed-based unit, specifically through an intervention focused on iterative improvements, influences middle school girls’ self-efficacy. This study was conducted in a suburban public middle school. It involved five female participants enrolled in a seventh-grade science classroom. Qualitative data were collected from pre- and post-interviews, self-reflection journals, observations and student artifacts. Multiple data sources were triangulated to ensure the credibility and depth of the findings. Qualitative data were analyzed using inductive and deductive coding to produce open codes, axial categories driven by Bandura’s four sources of …

A Mixed Methods Analysis On The Effect Of Active Learning On Extraneous Cognitive Load Within Undergraduate Statistics Courses, Michelle Brady Rich

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Students enrolled in college-level statistics courses often lack the foundational skills of statistical concepts which can potentially lead to increased mental load. Additionally, the curricula within undergraduate classes often focus on traditional theory with little student exploration or participation. This combination of increased mental load and passive lectures can be explored through the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). CLT examines how new information enters the limited capacity of an individual’s working memory and how exceeding this capacity affects the ability to transfer the information to long-term memory. This research focused on the extraneous cognitive load, or the load imposed by the …

Design And Verification Of The Multi-Slit Solar Explorer Camera Field Programmable Gate Arrays, Jordan M. Johnson

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Multi-Slit Solar Explorer, or MUSE, is a NASA mission that will take images of the Sun to study solar flares and the solar corona. The mission will provide insight into the mechanisms behind space weather. The mission consists of two cameras: the Spectrograph (SG), and the Context Imager (CI). The Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory is providing both cameras for the mission.

This report describes a part of the design and verification process for a central component on these cameras known as the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). These FPGAs are programmed to acquire, handle, and send images …

A Look Through The Bluest Eye: Intersectionality, Identity & The Role Of Fiction, Sydney Foster

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Since its coinage in 1989, the idea of intersectionality has persisted academic research in understanding how a person is treated and what experiences they are subjected to, specifically those belonging to marginalized groups. My theory is that a person’s intersectionality is the vehicle which leads to their experiences, which when totaled, comprise a person’s identity. This project focuses specifically on the treatment of Black women and girls, the academic research and first-hand accounts that support the existence of the perpetual adultification, dehumanization, and sexualization of these individuals, and how these phenomena increase Black women and girls’ risk for maltreatment, specifically …

Desert Deep: The Great Salt Lake's Evanesce And The Gravity Of Recovery, Avery Truman

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Great Salt Lake has been shrinking since the mid-19th century for several reasons, primarily due to a higher evaporation rate caused by climate change and water diversion from the Bear, Weber, and Jordan rivers. This problem will cause mass ecosystem destruction, release toxic chemicals into the air, and strand migrating birds. As an environmental studies and geography major, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the Great Salt Lake in my courses. I decided to write Desert Deep, a series of essays, after I took my first creative nonfiction writing class. The goal was to tell the …

Bridging Reaction Engineering And Polymers Design: Solvent Effects In Continuous Flow Copolymerization, Leila Ba

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-methyl methacrylate) [poly(GMA-co-MMA)] is a promising functional copolymer for photoresist applications due to its reactive epoxy groups and tunable physicochemical properties. This thesis is focused on this polymer and integrates theoretical solubility prediction, thermodynamic modeling, and continuous-flow synthesis to establish quantitative structure–process–property relationships for their use in microelectronic-grade solvents.

Solubility behavior in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), propylene glycol monomethyl ether (PGME), and propylene glycol monomethyl ether acetate (PGMEA) was investigated using the Hildebrand and Hansen models, Hoy group-contribution method, Polymer Genome machine-learning platform, and Flory–Huggins thermodynamic analysis of Gibbs free energy of mixing. Experimental saturation solubility measurements at 25 °C …

Paucilactobacillus Wasatchensis Gas Production In Cheddar Cheese Through Symbiotic Amino Acid Metabolism With Lactococcus Lactis Starter Cultures, Niharika Mishra

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Cheese is popular for its rich sensory notes and desirable physical attributes; however, the late blowing gas defect in cheddar cheese disrupts its appearance and can undermine its commercial value, for example if the late gas defect is severe, the block can crumble upon cutting, increasing cutting losses from 10% (non-defective) up to 50% (Donnely et al., 2014).

Paucilactobacillus wasatchensis cannot survive pasteurization (McMahon, D. J., et al., 2020); therefore, it enters the cheese as a contaminant during the cheesemaking process. Cheesemaking occurs in three stages: (1) curdling of milk by acidification through starter cultures, (2) separation of curd from …

Housing Markets In The American West: A Dynamic Time Warping Analysis Of Inter-City Relationships, Daniel Johnson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Housing markets revolve around perhaps the most consequential good to the average person, yet the relationships between local housing markets remain understudied. While major American cities appear to follow similar patterns, the nature of these connections is not fully understood. This project looks at housing markets across the western United States, using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to identify which cities tend to lead or lag others in price movements, and look at the overall similarity of their market movements. We also explore whether geographic distance, population growth, and income growth help explain why some markets are more similar than others. …

When “Voice” Becomes Law: A Caution Against Emancipatory Complacency In Anti-Sexual Violence Feminism, Samantha Lillian To

LL.M. Essays & Theses

This Essay destabilizes a feminist project that seeks to emancipate sexually violated women in the United States through a rhetoric of voice. There is a body of feminist literature that imagines voice as unconstrained self-expression through which sexually violated women resist patriarchal oppression and heal from trauma. When projected onto the courtroom, however, this framework becomes an ideal that the legal process, by its structure, cannot fully accommodate. This Essay presents three claims. First, despite the emergence of a legal promise of “voice” after the enactment of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, feminists should not treat it as the culmination …

Men’S Courts Or Women’S Laws? Domestic Violence, Men’S Rights Activism, And The Specter Of False Cases, Arushi Gupta

LL.M. Essays & Theses

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Indian newspapers and magazines began reporting stories of domestic abuse in matrimonial homes ranging from women subjected to dowry demands, beatings, everyday mistreatment, financial control, expulsion from the home, and even being burnt to death. Feminists recognized this as an urgent issue to respond to as these reports highlighted that domestic violence is endemic. Everybody knew a victim. Their own mothers, sisters, friends and, in some cases, they themselves were facing violence within marriage. The lobbying of women’s groups helped prompt the passage of Section 498A in 1983, which criminalized cruelty against women …

Base Running: A Lost Art In Baseball, Ethan York

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In an era of baseball dominated by home runs and launch angles, the subtle art of baserunning is often overlooked, despite its measurable impact on winning games. Baserunning Runs (BsR) addresses this gap by quantifying the number of runs a player contributes through performance on the basepaths, capturing value beyond traditional metrics like stolen bases. This study constructs multiple regression models that predict BsR for Major League Baseball (MLB) players based on baserunning-related statistics. The primary objective is to examine the association between BsR and key predictors, including stolen bases (SB), extra bases taken (EB), and sprint speed (SS), while …

A Maintenance-Aware Machine Learning Framework For Network-Level Highway Pavement Condition Prediction, Jin Hwan Kim, Guk Gon Song, Youngguk Seo

Faculty Articles

This study develops and validates maintenance-aware machine learning models for predicting the Highway Pavement Condition Index (HPCI) on the Korean expressway network. Multiple regression and tree-based models were trained and tested using the pavement condition surveys archived in the Highway Pavement Management System (HPMS). A stacking regressor that integrates random forest, gradient boosting, and extreme gradient boosting as base learners exhibited the most robust predictions. Performance metrics indicated that the stacking ensemble achieved a mean absolute error of 0.21, a root mean square error of 0.31, and a coefficient of determination exceeding 0.73 on the testing dataset. Also, the residuals …

Uav Blast Load Characterization For Structural Design, Jalee Grace Spain

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As the use of drones, or UAVs, increases, so does the risk of collision with infrastructure. When drones collide with a building, an impact or blast load is applied. Using current literature and structural analysis, a load case can be defined for a blast load induced by a drone.

Connecting With Augmentative And Alternative Communication Users: An Internship Report, Karaline Kerzie

Communication Disorders and Occupational Therapy Undergraduate Honors Theses

This article evaluates and reflects on personal experiences working with children with autism in an early intervention, multidisciplinary setting. Implementation of Applied Behavior Analysis, Speech-Language Pathology, Augmentative and Alternative Communication, and Occupational Therapy techniques created a multifaceted and comprehensive intervention environment in a free-clinic setting.

Supporting An Inclusive Summer Camp For Children With Developmental Disabilities Who Use Aac And Their Neurotypical Peers: A Practice-Based Report, Jessica Hicks

Communication Disorders and Occupational Therapy Undergraduate Honors Theses

For my honors research, I completed an internship in an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) lab at the University of Arkansas. For most of my internship work, I helped support an inclusive AAC summer camp for children with and without developmental disabilities, such as autism, for whom speech does not fully meet their communication needs. AAC includes high-tech tools such as communication apps on tablets that serve as speech-generating devices (SGDs). SGDs were used by many of the AAC summer camp participants with developmental disabilities. In this report, I will provide background information on AAC and developmental disabilities. I will …

Beyond Duality: The Doppelganger And The Multiplicity Of Identity In Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Alyssa Roberts

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This paper argues that Oscar Wilde uses The Picture of Dorian Gray to transform the Gothic doppelganger from a symbol of moral duality into a site of multiplicity that exposes the instability of identity. Earlier iterations of the double–ranging from mythic traditions to nineteenth-century texts—such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—tend to structure the self through binary opposition. Wilde, however, reconfigures the double as an accumulative and dynamic process. This paper analyzes how Wilde disrupts the rigidity of Victorian binaries and society’s investment in duality through the portrait’s accumulation of the consequences of Dorian’s actions as …

Understanding How Latinx Millennials Attend To Their Mental Health And Emotional Well-Being: A Phenomenological Study, Natalie A. Nieves

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Latinx millennials represent over half of the millennial population in the United States. Yet, existing research on how this population attends to their mental health and emotional well-being remains largely absent from the counseling literature. This descriptive phenomenological study asked: How do Latinx millennials attend to their mental health and emotional well-being? Twelve participants, identifying as Latinx millennials born between 1981 and 1996, residing in the United States, and actively engaging in practices supporting their mental health and emotional well-being, participated in a two-part, semi-structured interview process. Data were collected and analyzed using Colaizzi's phenomenological data analysis method. The findings …

The Cobalt Curse: Cobalt’S Role And Risks, Marley Jackowitz

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper examines the hidden environmental, geopolitical, economic, and social costs of the cobalt supply chain. Fueled by the demand for battery technology and electric vehicles, cobalt has become an essential element to the green energy transition. With the largest share of global cobalt deposits, the Democratic Republic of the Congo bears a disproportionate share of the industry’s harms. Cobalt mining in the DRC is marked by environmentally degrading practices and inhumane working conditions, compromising Congolese health, safety, and well-being. Chapter 1 discusses the environmental impacts of DRC cobalt mining and its adverse effects on public health. Environmentally degrading mining …