Lingering Loading, Chi Hao Chang

Masters Theses

In a culture that values speed, seamlessness, and instant clarity, Lingering Loading investigates how graphic design can slow down our ways of seeing and knowing. As technology, internet culture, and social media continue to condition us to expect immediate answers, we have become more passive in how we receive meaning. We scroll, absorb, and move on—often without time to ask what we truly think or feel. But in the increasingly rare moments of pause, something undefinable can happen.

To linger is not to delay progress, but to make space for participation—for meaning to emerge from within, not be delivered from …

The Story Of Stories, Yichu Wang

Masters Theses

I don’t recontextualize objects—I subvert them.

I’m not interested in paying homage to forms or giving them a

second life. I don’t see a fire hydrant and think, “what if it were

a lamp?” I’m not recycling visual cues to create metaphor. What

excites me is the slippage—when an object escapes its assigned

role and starts to unravel. My work imagines this moment: when

function collapses, and the familiar becomes estranged.

This is my version of “I think, therefore I am”—not through

language, but through distortion. By twisting the physical

world, I interrogate our reliance on order, logic, and legibility. …

Enactive Narrativities: Rubber-Times Historicity And Indigenous Media In Peruvian Amazonia, Gabriel Torrealba Alfonzo

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article analyzes the intersection between historicity and politics expressed in Kukama media-making practices. It examines the political and enactive dimensions involved in the Indigenous mediatization of rubber-era narratives in Peruvian Amazonia. I focus on the case of Radio Ucamara, a Kukama radio station from the Peruvian town of Nauta, and the ways in which they confront private and state powers through the production of digital and non-digital media. I specifically analyze Indigenous media-makers’ instrumentalizations of rubber-times narrativity by virtue of aesthetic mastery. Radio Ucamara media relies on a polyphonic strategy that encapsulates both narrative and meta-narrative discourses aimed to …

Welcome To My Mind Palace: The Power Of Fantastical Thinking, Sadie Levine

Masters Theses

What follows is a record of my efforts to make the magic and horrors of my internal world tangible and shareable. The brain constructs hyper-specific fictional realities from childhood to adulthood, yet the scientific study of the mind often forgoes the subjective and the visual. I offer a complementary exploration of the mind - one that is highly visual and based on my own experiences, yet still contextualized in psychological research. Finding the magic in everyday life, and by extension, retreating into alternate realities, is a conscious choice I make, but I have not always had the option to choose. …

Can You Hear A Pen Drop? A Study Of Classroom Acoustics And Aural Experience, Henry P. Moe

Honors Projects

This study investigates the relationship between classroom acoustics and perceived listening ease at Seattle Pacific University. Five classrooms were analyzed using objective measurements of reverberation time and background noise, and student and faculty perceptions were collected via surveys. While prior research and acoustic standards establish that poor acoustics hinder learning, findings revealed reverberation time and noise levels alone did not fully explain subjective listening experiences. Factors such as class size, seating arrangement, and external noise sources significantly shaped perceptions. The results underscore the importance of considering pedagogical goals and classroom usage when designing or evaluating learning environments.

A System Of Systems (Sos) Meta-Architecture Approach To Design Digital Platform-Based Domestic Worker Distribution System, Prithbey Raj Dey, Cihan H. Dagli, David Lee Enke

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this research, a System of Systems (SoS) meta-architecture is conceptualized to design a digital platform-based system framework for the distribution of domestic workers to boost the crowd-sourced economy. While an Object Process Methodology (OPM) is used to articulate the relationships between the objects and functions, a Design Structure Matrix (DSM) has been applied to address the interactions between individual components to categorize them into subsystems to create the SoS architecture. This SoS architecture incorporates several Key Performance Attributes (KPAs) and Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) to systematically evaluate the meta-architectures. The Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), Pugh’s Evaluation Matrix, and Technique …

Blockchain-Based Ai-Assisted Cyber-Physical Systems For Robust And Reliable Machining Processes, Prithbey Raj Dey, David Lee Enke

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study demonstrates the prospects of Blockchain-based Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) to establish a scalable framework for designing a secured, automated, and traceable modeling in machining processes. Machining operations like turning, being inherently complex, rely on different types of explanatory parameters such as feed rate, depth of cut, cutting speed, tools, and environmental factors. All of these variables significantly influence key response variables like surface quality, tool wear, cutting forces, and energy consumption. The proposed Blockchain-based framework, designed using the Object-Process Methodology (OPM) systems modeling language, enables the reliable exchange of comparative data streams within a unified data analytics platform. By …

The Prospect Of Geospatial Analysis In The Prediction Of Surface Quality In Machining, Prithbey Raj Dey, David Lee Enke

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This research underscores the prospect of geospatial analysis in machining operations to enhance precise prediction and robustness, offering a comprehensive framework of spatial modeling for advanced manufacturing processes. Geospatial analysis not only provides accurate predictions but also estimates the uncertainty associated with these predictions, offering valuable insights for process optimization. The surface quality in the machining processes is expressed by the estimation of the average surface roughness. While machining parameters are extensively analyzed for their influence on surface quality, the roughness profile parameters are inadequately explored. This work integrates these underexplored parameters into geospatial predictive models and evaluates their impact …

Problematizing A Hegemonic English: An Assessment Of Language Use And Diversity In A Nation Of Immigrant Communities, Charlotte Choat

Honors Projects

The increasing development of language diglossia between global English and local languages around the world raises questions of how the American linguistic character will react. In a culture defined by its lack of ethnolinguistic definition, can language localization occur? A study of language development in America requires a historical assessment of language contact, discourse, and dominance. The present state of American English is not the natural result or authentic representation of America’s population, but the outcome of language restrictionism and resource disparity enforced on many ethnolinguistic groups throughout American history. In the modern era of intensified immigration, ethnolinguistic diversity is …

Creating Family Flow By Participating In The Reflective Practice Of Exercise With Family Members, Julianne M. Sylva

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This synthesis project explores how families can use shared exercise and reflective practice to cultivate lifelong learning habits and deepen family connection. Anchored in the fields of critical and creative thinking, the work integrates concepts of metacognition, flow, and personal mastery to examine how structured, intentional routines can foster both individual growth and relational attunement. The author documents a series of weekly exercise sessions undertaken with her co-parent and child at a local training facility. Drawing from theories of action research, reflective practice (Schön, Brookfield), and flow (Csikszentmihalyi), the project combines personal observation, scholarly frameworks, and course-based learning to construct …

Piloting Trauma-Informed Workshops To Enhance Life Skills In Housing Transitions: Action Research, Negar Ghaderi

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This action research pilot project explores how trauma-informed, life skills workshops grounded in critical and creative thinking methods can support Housing First (HF) residents transitioning from homelessness to permanent housing. The study is based on the understanding that addressing homelessness requires more than housing provision—it demands attention to the cognitive and emotional impacts of trauma through co-created, resident-centered interventions. Using iterative cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting, the project engages a small, fluctuating group of 4–5 participants from a diverse community of 60 HF residents. The pilot program includes six workshops, one focus group discussion, and individual interviews over …

Building A Sustainable System: Reimagining Nonprofit Leadership Through Critical And Creative Thinking, Darius Tafadzwa Shenje Peyton

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This synthesis introduces the Critical and Creative Thinking Leadership Toolbox (CCTLT), a practitioner-oriented framework designed to support nonprofit leaders navigating staff engagement, organizational complexity, and long-term sustainability. Drawing on lived experience, scholarly literature, and graduate coursework in the Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) program, the project challenges traditional leadership models that treat employee buy-in as a binary status or compliance metric. Instead, it reframes buy-in as a dynamic spectrum shaped by trust, clarity, psychological safety, and reciprocal accountability. The work critiques unsustainable leadership practices common in mission-driven organizations and offers an actionable alternative grounded in reflection, systems awareness, and dialogic …

Speech Camp: An Action Research Approach To Transformative Presentation Skills Coaching, Sherrie Torrey

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This synthesis explores the evolution of Speech Camp, a participant-centered coaching program developed by the author to support individuals with presentation anxiety to increased confidence in their communication. This program, developed through iterative redesign and informed by Action Research and Action Learning, reframes presentation skills development as a relational and reflective process rather than a performance-based task. The project draws upon theoretical frameworks—including Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory, Ryan and Deci’s Self-Determination Theory, and Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory—to analyze the program’s current methodology and curriculum to reveal how elements of structured reflection, peer engagement, and psychological safety promote meaningful internal change. Special …

Becoming A Bridge Of Collaboration: How Being Supports Doing Within The Help Model Of Leadership, Andrea Burgess

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This synthesis project introduces the HELP Model—Humility, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Service, and Psychological Safety—as a developmental framework for sustainable leadership rooted in character formation and relational trust. It asserts that credible and effective leadership begins with inner orientation before it can be embodied as consistent, ethical action in the world. Through integration of leadership theory, developmental psychology, and theology, the project critiques conventional, strategy-driven paradigms of organizational well-being. HELP extends Robert Kegan’s framework to include relational and spiritual dimensions of the leader’s individual growth as necessary conditions for fostering organizational collaboration. Drawing on reflective inquiry and practice-based insight, the project …

Sociology: Culture, Marcia Morrison

Open Educational Resources

This work examine culture. It begins by examining the foundations of culture to include norms, values, language, symbols and knowledge. In looking at each, it breaks down the implication of each to the development of ourselves as well as the person in the environment. It moves on to look at contexts of culture such as dominant cultures juxtapose to competing cultural systems, and how the various elements of culture can serve to either promote or minimize the various cultural constructs within society.

Constructing Portraits Of Elementary Teachers Of Ethnic Studies: Examining The Narratives Of Anti-Racist Educators In An Era Of Common Core Curriculum And Instruction, Jennifer S. Manglicmot

Dissertations

The emergence of policies requiring ethnic studies courses in California’s secondary and higher education institutions amplified calls for anti-racist pedagogy and content in all K-12 grade levels. Currently, little empirical research exists on how ethnic studies is taught in elementary school classrooms. This absence is significant because instruction in these settings tend to focus heavily on meeting state content standards (i.e. Common Core), frameworks which have been critiqued as ignoring communities of Color epistemologies and promoting color-evasive ideologies, among other concerns. Through interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis, this qualitative multiple-case study explored how anti-racist and ethnic studies pedagogies are …

Black Parents’ Use Of Educational Advocates: Disrupting Structural And Systemic Racism In Education, Fredericka R. Butler Phd

Dissertations

Research indicates that educators’ deficit perceptions of Black students and their families factor into Black student overrepresentation in disciplinary and special education referrals and underrepresentation in advanced coursework (Annamma et al., 2014; Ford et al., 2023). This prevalence of implicit bias is documented, as is the significance of Black parent involvement in their children’s education (Latunde & Clark-Louque, 2016). Black parents’ awareness of educator racism encourages distrust of educators and interferes with cultivating effective home-school relationships that encourage successful student outcomes. School districts offer the services of educational advocates to provide support to parents whose children are referred for special …

Investigating The Associations Of Cognitive Health, Health Behaviors, And Personality In Older Community-Dwelling Adults, Yan-Jhu Su

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Cognitive decline poses a significant public health challenge, with profound implications for aging populations. This dissertation investigates the associations between health behaviors, leisure activities, personality traits, and cognitive function in older U.S. adults, using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS). This work comprises three studies that explore both cross-sectional and longitudinal perspectives on cognitive aging.

Study 1 examines the complex interactions between personality traits, education, health behaviors, and cognitive function. The study is divided into two parts: Study 1a explores the role of health behaviors—smoking, alcohol use, and physical activity—as …

Embodying Altruistic Love: The Role Of Emotions In Teaching Black Students With Disabilities Within An Inclusive Elementary School, Joshua Armentrout

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Teacher emotions play a pivotal yet understudied role in shaping the educational experiences of Black students with disabilities (SWDs). This study examines how five special educators in a fully inclusive elementary school understand, experience, and navigate their emotions in relation to Black SWDs. Using a qualitative approach grounded in portraiture, this study explores the intersection of race, disability, and emotion, revealing how teachers internalize, resist, and negotiate dominant ideologies within the broader educational system.

Guided by a three-dimensional space framework from the field of narrative inquiry—temporality, sociality, and spatiality—this study traces how educators’ emotions are shaped by past experiences, social …

Re-Imagining As Re-Empowering, Zheyun Chen

Masters Theses

While landscapes designed have been shown to effectively promote healing, foster community, and facilitate social empowerment, the landscapes of domestic violence shelters are woefully understudied.

This thesis explores the potential of integrating and combining existing design elements into the landscape to create a system that fosters a “safe place” within an urban context.

In this thesis, I developed a series of typologies based on existing landscape elements that are not necessarily connected with trauma-informed care or a healing landscape. I examined these in an urban context, specifically at Casa Myrna, a domestic violence shelter in Roxbury, Boston, MA.

Through the …

Echoes Of Scent: Redefining Museum Accessibility, Jiongyi Tang

Masters Theses

Museums and art galleries have traditionally been visually dominant, relying on sight as the primary means of experiencing art and presenting information. However, for blind and visually impaired visitors, these spaces can feel alienating or exclusionary. Museums and galleries must move beyond visually dominant exhibits to create inclusive, multisensory experiences, especially for blind and visually impaired visitors. This thesis challenges conventional, sight-reliant exhibition design and advocates for a shift toward approaches that fully engage the human sensory spectrum. Rooted in empathy and inspired by the lived experiences of visually impaired individuals, this work explores how museums can become more inclusive …

Reimagining The Arcade, Yichen Liao

Masters Theses

Sustainable urban regeneration refers to the revitalization of underused architectural spaces to promote environmental responsibility, social equity, and cultural continuity within the urban fabric. This thesis explores how spatial design can act as a catalyst for such regeneration by reactivating The Arcade Providence—the oldest indoor shopping mall in the U.S.—as a dynamic, interdisciplinary platform for artistic production and academic exchange. Although Providence’s urban growth has slowed in recent decades, its historic downtown still reflects the fragmentation of post-industrial decline. The Arcade, while architecturally significant, remains underutilized and disconnected from the evolving spatial and infrastructural needs of artists, educators, and cultural …

Teachers' Knowledge And Understanding Of Physical Literacy In Physical Education Learning: A Phenomenological Approach, Johan Irmansyah, Maulidin Maulidin, Herman Syah, Edi Kurniawan

The Qualitative Report

This study explores the knowledge and understanding of elementary school physical education (PE) teachers regarding the concept of physical literacy (PL) through a phenomenological approach. PL encompasses fundamental movement skills, as well as the knowledge, motivation, and confidence necessary for lifelong participation in physical activities. Ten PE teachers with over 10 years of teaching experience were selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected via in-depth interviews, observations, and documentation, and analyzed using inductive content analysis with the aid of ATLAS.ti software. The findings reveal that many teachers hold misconceptions about PL, often prioritizing the mastery of physical abilities while overlooking …

A Teacher, A Tutor, A Friend: Chatgpt And The High School Experience, Saisha Gupta, Vivek Mehta, Rebecca Kam, Caroline Ehmann, Alma Orgad, Emily Kuang, Alejandro Castro Barrantes, Matthew Posada, Samay Shah, Nikhita Prasad, Tara Pai, Eileen Ho, Shirley Xi, Tianyi Zhou, Elaina Li, Stephanie Wan, Shreya Paranjape, Zoe Dearling, Siqi (Grace) Peng, Aanya Kaveti, Gwendolyn Lowrance, Angela Ziyi Xie, Mira Xu, Adhiti Hariram, Alexa Muse

The Qualitative Report

Given the increasing emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, high school students' perspectives on ChatGPT are underrepresented in current research literature. As high school student researchers in an English Language Arts course, we approached this gap in literature by asking the question: In what ways do pressures within high school communities influence students’ perspectives on justifying or rejecting the use of ChatGPT? We interviewed 24 secondary students and conducted a thematic and discourse analysis, coding the interviews through the lenses of social goods (Gee, 2014), Figured Worlds (Holland et al., 1998), and positioning theory (Holland et al., 1998; Ingram …

Ziyyarah: Ethical And Intra-Active Space For Conducting Interviews With Muslim American Students, Wesam M. Salem

The Qualitative Report

Conducting research with Muslim American participants, who have non-Western roots and are bound to their cultural, linguistic, and religious practices, the prescribed, Eurocentric, and power-laden interviewing practices appear to be unfit and essentializing. This paper extends the argument to de/colonize research practices to create realities that are inclusive of participants' ways of knowing and culture. It also draws from the call for an intra-active and entangled approach to research that emphasizes how researchers and their subjects mutually co-constitute knowledge through their entanglement in the research process. It is also rooted in postcolonial theory, and the concept of the nomadic subject …

Site-Specific Nurseries: Reconnecting Nurseries To Time And Place Through Ecotypic Bare-Root Production, Tryn Collins

Masters Theses

We surround ourselves with empty landscapes, landscapes that are stagnant and decorative. Lawns edged with cultivated non-native species are inert spaces, devoid of complexity and serve little function beyond their appearances. These spaces that symbolize wealth through controlling nature are in fact the end of nature. Most of us are completely unaware of the intricate webs of life, the ecologies, that are our real habitat, hidden under the concrete and turf, pushed to the edges of our developments. They are relationships established over thousands of years between plants, insects, animals, weather and soil. This kind of complexity scares us, it …

The Portals: Jewelry As A Site Of Escape And Solace, Jung Ki Min

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates jewelry as a medium for emotional escape and psychological refuge, offering multisensory alternative forms of escapism. Rooted in personal experiences of continuous change and instability, the work explores how imagined spaces—constructed through AI-generated and digitally assisted visuals and layered material processes—can serve as intimate sanctuaries. Drawing from psychological theories, surrealism, and escapism, the study positions jewelry as a portable interface that enables temporary retreat without full detachment from reality. The series of work, which integrates transparent acrylic, visual layering, and subtle dimensionality, materializes these imagined spaces into wearable forms. These pieces invite reflective engagement, allowing wearers to …

The Terror Of The Threshold: On Impermanence, Enclothed Hauntology, And Rest, David M. Legrand

Masters Theses

My artistic practice explores the intersections of impermanence, enclothed cognition, necropolitics, and rest as intertwined acts of decolonial resistance. Through a studio practice rooted in transient mediums—charcoal, chalk, and erasure—the work confronts neoliberal and anti-Black demands for coherence, productivity, and permanence. The ephemeral drawings, layered and dissolved on my studio walls, embody a fugitive aesthetic inspired by Édouard Glissant’s “right to opacity[1],” rejecting colonial logics of legibility and commodification. These impermanent gestures mirror Haiti’s silenced revolutionary history[2], as theorized by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, while invoking Vodou’s vevè symbols as counter-archives of survival.

Enclothed cognition[3] is reimagined …

Gamifit, Sishu Wu

Masters Theses

How can we make fitness feel more like raising a pet than checking off a chore?

Gamifit is a playful system that helps beginners build exercise habits by blending AR fitness pets (Fitimals) with a simple physical reminder device (The Dock). Instead of tracking numbers and steps, it focuses on emotional motivation—your Fitimal eats, rests, and grows based on your workout consistency. Skip too many days, and they might get sick... or even leave.

This project uses gamification to bring short-term joy into a long-term challenge, creating a softer, kinder fitness journey—one that feels fun, forgiving, and actually worth sticking …

The Limits Of Knowing: Determinism, Uncertainty, And What’S Beyond The Human Gaze, Xilong T. Zhang

Masters Theses

This essay traces a personal philosophical and artistic journey from rigid belief in scientific determinism to an evolving embrace of uncertainty, subjectivity, and computational perception. Raised in an atheist, scientifically grounded household in China, the author initially adopted Newtonian determinism and Laplace’s thought experiment of a fully predictable universe as guiding principles. These beliefs informed early artistic practices rooted in Constructivism, geometry, and rule-based aesthetics. However, a failed attempt to fully optimize life through deterministic control led to physical and mental collapse, prompting deeper exploration into Cartesian dualism, quantum mechanics, and the limits of reason. Through Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and …