Digital Commons Network^™

Can Social Support Ameliorate Burnout?, Timothy Finney

Master's Theses

Mental health provides different areas of interest compared to physical health when looking at general health. Social support decreases the negative impacts of burnout while positively influencing productive components of the economy. Social sciences other than economics such as sociology and psychology take notice of the impact of social support on burnout. Pronto Soccorso e Medicina d’ Urgenza Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria in Parma, Italy provides high quality health care services before and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic while anticipating continuing to administer care well into the future. Here we show social support effecting workers in the health care industry. Work colleagues influencing …

X-Ray Observation Of The Roche-Lobe-Filling White Dwarf Plus Hot Subdwarf System Ztf J213056.71+442046.5, S. Mereghetti, N. La Palombara, T. Kupfer, T. R. Marsh, C. M. Copperwheat, K. Deshmukh, P. Esposito, T. Maccarone, F. Pintore, Liliana Rivera Sandoval

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

ZTF J213056.71+442046.5 is the prototype of a small class of recently discovered compact binaries composed of a white dwarf and a hot subdwarf that fills its Roche lobe. Its orbital period of only 39 minutes is the shortest known for the objects in this class. Evidence for a high orbital inclination (i = 86°) and for the presence of an accretion disk has been inferred from a detailed modeling of its optical photometric and spectroscopic data. We report the results of an XMM-Newton observation carried out on 2021 January 7. ZTF J213056.71+442046.5 was clearly detected by the Optical Monitor, …

Superficial: An Exploration Of Decoration, Fashion, Taste, Camp, And Trends, Jillian Ohl

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

Since the rise of consumer culture in the late 19th century, Americans have had a complicated relationship with decorative objects, the idea of taste, and the cycle of trends within our classist society. This essay examines some of the decorative objects in my childhood home such as patterned wallpaper and an antique chair as well as a contemporary brand name mascara. While these objects do not have major functional properties, their decoration and superficiality bring me joy. To better understand my appreciation of decoration and aesthetics, I assess how an object or fashion is considered in good or bad taste. …

Because Potato, Candice Evers

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing …

Fictitious Ecology, Paulina Zuckerman

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

My thesis project, The Mountain Fog, is a children’s picture book pitch that tells a light-hearted story of two dogs who must face an environmental disaster. In this accompanying critical essay, I break down the process of crafting a fictional relationship between author-illustrator, animal characters, and the environment. It begins through the context of J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories,” which identifies seeing the world through two lenses - the Primary world and the Secondary world. From these terms, I navigate the idea of a fictitious ecology, an encapsulated anthropomorphic world governed by the creator’s personal experience with nature. This …

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …

The Hidden Power Of Images: An Allegory Of Chaos And Performance In The Digital Age, Livia Xandersmith

MFA in Visual Art

Within this text, I explore the hidden power of images in American visual culture through painting-based installations. I investigate images of the past and present juxtaposed in a surrealist landscape. Through the use of images in the news, entertainment, advertising, and images within the home, I depict how the problems of the past bleed into our perceptions of the present. I find that this cycle of problem inheritance connects us as humans regardless of time, generation, and place. In my work, I explore the complexity of image culture and its shifting presence within the digital age. Using surrealist collage, I …

Echoed Sites And The Unknowable Object, Joseph Canizales

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis will discuss the expanded field of sculpture, simulacra, digital technology, and two terms I’ve devised: the unknowable object, and echoed sites. Within these two terms, I’m concerned with the complicated relationship between humans and geology and how we extract material from the ground without reflecting on the geologic history of the site. In echoed sites I create sculptures with and without a geologic site or object, by way of digital technology. These forms display two states paradoxically in balance, where what’s presented leaves more questions than answers. Thus, as part of echoed sites, exists the unknowable object. …

Constants, Martin Lammert

MFA in Visual Art

A constant is something that I consider to be present in everything I make. Each overarching constant is a clue which may help the reader come to a conclusion about why I make sculpture. I will address repetitive motion in regard to failure and how this parallels the ongoing endeavors of the alchemist. I will discuss the idea of meaning as it exists in the conflict between cleanliness and the mess. I will explain how Hollywood movie tropes can be used to create sculpture. Lastly, I will frame the theatrical vessel as a vehicle to make a story more significant …

Source Of All Hair, Wearer Of All Socks, Samantha Modder

MFA in Visual Art

I work figuratively in pen, collage, and digital media to portray larger-than-life Black, female characters taking up space in real and imagined worlds. In a series of mural installations, I present a subjective Black woman’s fairytale to process interlocking structures of oppression. Centered in the speculative practice of the Black imaginary that creates spaces of both comfort and confrontation, I tell the story of a Black woman who escapes into an alternate reality made up of only herself, her hair, and the clothes she wears. This text is centered on a chapter of this ongoing narrative, Source of All Hair, …

Disorientations, Noah Greene-Lowe

MFA in Visual Art

The materials that make up the ordinary and mundane in the United States also reinforce and normalize a white spatial imaginary. Conventions of mapping, imaging of land and landscape, and elements of the built environment continue to orient us in a logic of space as property. In my sculptural work, I employ strategies of disorientation and creative repair, or reconstruction, to unsettle the spatial practices of whiteness and structures of power embedded in the mundane, the familiar, and the domestic. I consider the planned cohousing community where I grew up as an influence on my work, and my whiteness. By …

Un Guisado: Allí, Allá And The Space In Between, Quinn A. Briceño

MFA in Visual Art

I am a Guisado: a savory stew. A blend of two worlds: one of Nicaragua, and the other of the United States. I am both Nicaragaüense y Estadounidense. As an artist, I work with painting and collage as a form of image making that carefully takes inspiration from those traditions to create a new narrative. In my work, I examine both my struggle with identity and how I came to be the person I am today. As I am both Nicaragüense and Estadounidense it is important that my paintings reflect those two worlds.

The ingredients making up my …

The Precarity Of Images: Sci-Fi Worldbuilding And Its Uses In Agitprop, Noah Jodice

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

“The Precarity of Images” examines how theories of worldbuilding common to the science fiction genre are applied to the making of agitational propaganda for liberation movements. In doing so, it questions how both explicit and implicit political images—posters, games, comics, illustrations, social media posts—either light a pathway for making a more just world or limit our ability to imagine alternate futures.

Following the ethos of Steven Jackson’s essay “Rethinking Repair,” the paper takes the “breakdown, erosion, and decay” of images as a starting point. Images change meaning over time as our cultural connections to them shift. Strategies of decoding and …

The Importance Of The Process: Recommendations And Thoughts For A Colombian Teacher Training Plan Framed In Global Citizenship, Human Rights, And Peace Education, Edwin Mauricio Martínez Callejas Sj

Master's Theses

The Importance of the Process states that Global Citizenship Education, Human Rights Education, and Peace Education can significantly change the normalized violent context in Colombia. The change should start with a teacher training process. So, Teachers will go to their classrooms to educate their students with dialogue and reflection about processes and actions to move the country to a culture of peace. Thus, after reviewing current literature and interviewing educators, the research shows how it is not enough to have information and content but also to have an active, participatory, and sustainable work plan in which the importance of the …

A Modest Proposal: Trusted Pick-Up Points For Interlibrary Loan For Distant Users, Janet Brennan Croft

Faculty Publications

I want to start out by talking a little about the genesis of this idea. I was working at Rutgers in March 2020 and in fact I taught what might have been the very last in-person bibliographic instruction session before we shut down for spring break – which immediately turned into the long COVID lockdown, at least for us.

But within a matter of weeks, we were joined by other academic libraries all over the world, and all of our users became participants in a great distance education experiment—undergraduates, graduates, researchers, instructors, faculty, and all. The online library became the …

Millennials In The Workplace: Recalling Critical Incidents Of Negative Feedback, Jocelyn C. Key

Student Theses and Dissertations

The Millennial generation has become one of the largest groups in the workplace and reports needing constant feedback from their supervisors. However, previous research has suggested that while Millennials desire feedback, they only want it to be positive. This research study examined the critical incidents of negative feedback that Millennials employees and supervisors recall receiving and giving. The study consisted of a qualitative survey with multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The sample comprised of 61 respondents who identified as a Millennial – born between 1981-2000 and between the ages of 22-41 – and full-time employees, the equivalent of 35 or more …

The Stigmatization Of Mental Health And Wellness Programs In The Corporate World, Sumiya Chowdhury

Student Theses and Dissertations

This research paper will discuss the importance of mental health and work-related stress, increasing in today's adult population. Employees are more vocal about their challenges with depression, PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and anxiety. Many big corporations like Google and LinkedIn have supported mental health causes in their organizations and discussed coping methods on different platforms. Even though this kind of help breaks down the stigma around this issue, unfortunately, it is not enough to make employees in the corporate world feel safe to talk about mental health at work. Also, mental health stigma makes the environment hostile for those who …

Jeopardy! In Crisis: What Is Corporate Culture Issues Affecting The Entertainment Industry?, Evan Nemeroff

Student Theses and Dissertations

Cultural issues like sexism, racism, and social movements have impacted the entertainment industry, specifically the game show sector. This research identified how these prevalent matters in our society have affected celebrities by looking into the type of people who lead game shows, revealing if certain demographics such as race and gender influenced whether particular individuals were chosen to host a program. Included within this research are studies that portray how the game show industry has been biased explicitly towards one gender for several decades. Further research looks into a scandal that Sony faced when it had to name a successor …

Transitioning From Traditional In-Person Studio-Based Education Of Apparel Design Courses To Online Education During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Divya Desai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns many post-secondary educational institutions all-around the world, including the USA, were forced to transition their teaching methods from a traditional in-person to an online teaching format starting in the spring of 2020. This research however is focused on the transitioning of university-level studio-based Apparel Design (AD) courses to an online teaching format during the spring and fall 2020 semesters. Teaching AD courses that are studio-based and that particularly require hands-on skills like hand rendering, draping, sewing, or pattern drafting, are challenging to be taught online as they require in person step-by-step guidance …

A Novel Correction For The Adjusted Box-Pierce Test, Sidy Danioko, Jianwei Zheng, Kyle Anderson, Alexander Barrett, Cyril S. Rakovski

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The classical Box-Pierce and Ljung-Box tests for auto-correlation of residuals possess severe deviations from nominal type I error rates. Previous studies have attempted to address this issue by either revising existing tests or designing new techniques. The Adjusted Box-Pierce achieves the best results with respect to attaining type I error rates closer to nominal values. This research paper proposes a further correction to the adjusted Box-Pierce test that possesses near perfect type I error rates. The approach is based on an inflation of the rejection region for all sample sizes and lags calculated via a linear model applied to simulated …

“That’S What Hospice Is Supposed To Do”: How U.S. Hospice Care Staff Bridge Philosophy And Institutions, Morgan Alexa Leff

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Hospice founder Cicely Saunders wrote that “the dignity and worth of each individual patient [are] central to Hospice philosophy—an idea closely tied to anthropological personhood (Saunders and Clark 2002). As dying in hospice becomes an increasing reality of life in the United States, we must grapple with how the ideals, costs, and challenges of hospice care play out in the healthcare system. The institutional structures meant to ensure a ‘good death’ (while protecting the interests of the state) can fracture care of the dying. As hospice staff work within and around these structures, they build meaning in care strategies that …

University Foreign Language Teachers’ Perceptions Of Professor-Student Rapport: A Hybrid Qualitative Study, Maryam Roshanbin, Musa Nushi, Zahra Abolhassani

The Qualitative Report

Research has shown a consensus that positive professor-student relationship makes meaningful contributions to academic outcomes such as faculty effectiveness, increased motivation, enhanced learning, and excellent teaching. Employing a qualitative research design, the authors of this study examine the conceptualization of one specific aspect of faculty-student relationship; namely, rapport, which they believe is particularly salient in college classrooms characterized by effective teaching and a positive interpersonal climate. The data were collected through in-depth interviews with 26 Iranian foreign language professors who were selected through snowball sampling. A hybrid thematic analysis of the data revealed two core themes of rapport antecedents: (1) …

Factors That Drive The Choice Of Schools For Children In Middle-Class Muslim Families In Indonesia: A Qualitative Study, Enung Hasanah, M Ikhwan Al Badar, M Ikhsan Al Ghazi

The Qualitative Report

Every different community has different family educational goals. The educational goals can encourage forming a lifestyle that becomes the identity of a particular community, as is the case in the middle-class Muslim family community in Indonesia. While there is no caste system in Indonesia, middle-class Muslim communities have found ways to merge Islamic values and privilege into a new subgroup. This phenomenon mainly appears in urban areas with more advanced socio-economic development than other areas, such as Yogyakarta. This study explores factors that drive the choice of schools for children of middle-class Muslim families in Indonesia. We used qualitative research …

Lead…For Father’S Sake: An Autoethnography On Leadership Growth In Western And Indigenous Contexts, Dau D. Jok

The Qualitative Report

This autoethnography examines the juxtaposition of Western and Indigenous ideas of leadership through my lens and experiences as a refugee, student-athlete, a patriarch in a sub-Saharan African culture, and Soldier. I utilized existing literature on leadership perspectives from multiple regions (McManus & Perruci, 2015) to contextualize the study, revealing insights into differences in leader-follower relationship, decision-making, and responsibilities. Although the Western context, specifically the United States, is predominantly individualistic, I highlight the versatility and plurality of its leadership—sports and the military provide the most potent examples. Leaders in the Western context are judged on their leadership role, whereas Indigenous leaders …

Hosts E-Newsletter: Jul 2021

HoSTS e-Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mathematical Model Of Zika Epidemic In Colombia, Sethupathy Ganesan

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Mathematical Model Of Immune-Inflammatory Response In Covid-19 Patients, Quiyana M. Murphy

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Studying The Effect Of Western Diet On Atherosclerosis Risk Factors, Eric L. Scott, Rebecca Segal, Angela M. Reynolds

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Modeling And Analysis Of Social Contagion In Overweight And Obesity Epidemic, Chathuri Edirisinghe Arachchige

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Scale-Free Properties Influence Breathing Rhythmogenesis., Cameron Grover

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.