Digital Commons Network^™

Hiring Preferences Of Federally Recognized Tribes" Survey And Analysis, Kristen Gutierrez Lovoti

Master of Public Administration for Senior Leadership

In the United States, there are currently 574 federally recognized Tribal nations. Both employers and applicants face challenges in the hiring process. Tribes may face challenges finding qualified applicants with the necessary skills for specific roles. A less-qualified employee may result in less impactful program outcomes, lower revenue, discouraged employees, and higher turnover rates. In addition, hiring an employee who doesn’t understand Tribal culture may result in ineffective programs, policies, and/or miscommunication. For those looking to work for a Tribal government, applicants often find challenges in that hiring preferences/policies (P&Ps) are different from Tribe to Tribe and not posted in …

May 2025, Volume 21, Number 1, Winthrop University Archives And Special Collections

Retrospect: News from the Louise Pettus Archives and Special Collections at Winthrop University

No abstract provided.

Revisiting Co-Expression-Based Automated Function Prediction In Yeast With Neural Networks And Updated Gene Ontology Annotations, Cole Mcguire

Computer Science Honors Theses

Automated function prediction (AFP) is the process of predicting the function of genes or proteins with machine learning models trained on high-throughput biological data. Deep learning with neural networks has become the dominant machine learning architecture of contemporary AFP models. However, it is unclear what difference exists between neural networks and previous machine learning architectures for AFP. Therefore, we created a model of AFP in yeast using neural networks that is trained on gene co-expression data to predict Gene Ontology (GO) labels. When trained on the same input data, we found that our model outperforms two other experimentally-validated co-expression-based AFP …

Invisible Infrastructure: Metal Artifacts At Trinity University’S Walking Trail Site, Adam Kingery

Sociology and Anthropology Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes a series of metal artifacts recovered from the Walking Trail Site located on the modern campus of Trinity University, a small private liberal arts university in San Antonio, Texas. These artifacts are a small sample of objects recovered from a late 19th and early 20th-century dumpsite. They were analyzed using X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) to determine their elemental composition, and subsequent research highlighted their place in the cultural and developmental history of San Antonio— especially in terms of water infrastructure and concrete building practices. Below, I examine the history of the Walking Trail archaeological site, an overview of …

Non-Identity-Based Support For Lgbtq+ Youth, Katherine Willcockson

Sociology and Anthropology Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Seeking Sustainable Tutoring Programs: A Case For Supplemental Instruction For The Success Of Middle School Students At The Sj Davis Campus In San Antonio, Texas, Charles Mazuca

Theses & Dissertations

Seeking Sustainable Tutoring Programs: A Case for Supplemental Instruction for the Success of Middle School Students at the SJ Davis Campus in San Antonio, Texas

Charles Andrew Mazuca

University of the Incarnate Word, 2025

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study was to implement a pilot tutoring program on the campus of a public middle school in San Antonio, Texas, that supports improved math performance of under-performing students on the state mandated standardized test known as the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) exam; broadly speaking, the study posed the question “How might a school community create a sustainable …

Providence Alaska Medical Center Research Support Services Roles And Workflows, Louise Marie Cardenas

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

This project addresses a critical gap in an oncology research department at a large Alaska healthcare provider by developing a comprehensive guide that documents the roles, responsibilities, and workflows of key positions. The department includes three research nurses, a pediatric Clinical Research Associate (CRA), an adult CRA, a regulatory coordinator, and a manager. Currently, no formal documentation exists to outline the foundational operational workflows of each role, resulting in isolated knowledge and the risk of operational disruptions if staff turnover occurs. This project aims to safeguard against these risks by thoroughly documenting the core functions, processes, and interdependencies of each …

“How Do You Replicate A Relationship?” An Exploration Of How A School-Community Partnership Was Conceptualized And Enacted, Emilie Coppinger

Doctoral Dissertations

With concerns about supporting students’ overall wellness on the rise, school-community partnerships offer a promising solution. These collaborations can improve outcomes for students, schools, and communities by bringing together diverse expertise and funding sources. However, how these partnerships are formed and maintained, as well as how stakeholders are included in them, needs further exploration. To address this gap, the current study follows a collaboration between a school district and local health agency from the project’s initiation through its execution. The research approach and study design draw on the traditions of community-based research and ethnography, guiding my data collection and representation …

Robust Edge Machine-Learning For The Real-Time Processing And Prediction Of Geomagnetic Anomalies And Geomagnetically Induced Currents (Gics), Talha Siddique

Doctoral Dissertations

Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) are currents induced in the Earth's surface conductors and are caused by geomagnetic disturbances or storms (GMDs). Such disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field are the result of interactions between the Earth's magnetosphere (the region of space dominated by the Earth's magnetic field) and the solar wind (a continuous stream of charged particles from the Sun) \cite{camporeale_machine_2018} \cite{geosciences12010027}. These induced currents considerably threaten vital technological systems, notably the electrical power grids. This research addresses the critical challenges of robust, real-time forecasting and monitoring of GICs using machine learning (ML). The project initiative responds to the inherent …

A Multi-Layered, Discourse-Oriented Exploration Of Learning Assistant-Student Interaction In Calculus I, Rebecca Butler

Doctoral Dissertations

Learning Assistants (LAs) are undergraduate near-peer tutors who aid in the instruction of collegiate courses in which they have previously been successful as students. It has been consistently shown that students in LA-supported STEM courses have more positive course outcomes than their peers without LA support. The benefits include improved retention, better scores on content assessments requiring higher-order reasoning, and a greater sense of belonging in STEM. Little is known about why students in LA-supported courses evidence this range of positive course outcomes, but it is conjectured that LAs facilitate these outcomes through their frequent and engaging interactions with students. …

Personal Device Use In Mathematics: An Investigation Into Access, Utilization, And Outcomes, Catherine Dennis

Doctoral Dissertations

Personal devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones, have become increasingly ubiquitous in undergraduate mathematics classrooms around the world. Moreover, the increased use of technology in educational contexts has provoked questions about equity in terms of student access, utilization, and the potential impact on outcomes (Hennessy & Dunham, 2008). This dissertation adds to the body of literature that addresses the overlap of personal device use and equity in undergraduate mathematics through three different methodological approaches: systematic review, quantitative inquiry, and qualitative exploration. The systematic review synthesizes 355 studies on personal device access, utilization, and outcomes in undergraduate mathematics. One key …

A Daughter’S Inheritance: The Construction Of Motherhood Through Death, Michaela George

Doctoral Dissertations

Mother-daughter relationships have been of feminist interest for decades as this relationship shifts narrative focus to underrepresented characters. In literature their relationship illustrates and complicates what it means to be ‘woman’ and provides access to educational theories, political understanding, and familial ideologies. Further, examining how these relationships shift and alter through eras of narratives offers tangible patterns for study. My dissertation examines the mother-daughter relationships in late eighteenth-century, early nineteenth-century prose by investigating how social constructions of gender are complicated, critiqued, shaped, and altered as they are passed from parent to child in deathbed scenes. I engage with medical humanities …

Charting Reciprocity: The Mapping Of Knowledge Production In Collaborative Community Networks, Nicole Cunningham-Frisbey

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

This dissertation reconceptualizes community-based literacy and writing practices as dynamic processes of reciprocal textual production grounded in feminist and Indigenous methodologies. It challenges traditional hierarchical structures by foregrounding community-generated epistemologies, emphasizing relational accountability, iterative reflexivity, and sustained ethical engagement. Using qualitative methods—including practitioner-created knowledge and social network maps and an analytical mapping method—the study explores how community practitioners strategically leverage their cultural identities and epistemological frameworks within collaborative writing and advocacy.Empirical case studies illustrate reciprocal knowledge production in action, showcasing intentional approaches such as oral storytelling, collaborative writing, and policy advocacy. Findings demonstrate how textual artifacts from reciprocal frameworks …

Assessing The Roles Of Corticosterone And Familiarity In Prosocial Helping Tasks, Taylor Anne Kimball-Sabatella

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies have suggested that rats may be motivated by empathy, a characteristic that has been historically viewed as uniquely human, when engaging in helping other individuals escape stressful situations. Some researchers refute this idea, suggesting rats may be motivated by social interaction or other factors. To better understand what is driving helping behavior, it is critical to investigate the effectiveness of the stressors used in previous studies, how stress levels change over time, and how the stress of the recipient is related to the actions of the helper. If restraint is causing sufficient stress to the trapped individual and a …

Wigner's Theorem And Spectrum Shrinking Maps, Meaghan Allen

Doctoral Dissertations

Wigner's Theorem, an influential result in quantum mechanics established by Eugene Wigner in 1931, states that every symmetry transformation on a ray space is induced by either a unitary or anti-unitary transformation. In this work, we generalize Wigner's Theorem in two directions: first, to maps between different Hilbert spaces, and second, to maps between factors of type II. In both cases, we focus on weakening the assumptions on the map, specifically by utilizing spectrum shrinking conditions. For the first generalization, let $\mathcal{H}_1$ and $\mathcal{H}_2$ be Hilbert spaces, and let $k$ be a positive integer such that $2\leq k < \frac{1}{2} \dim(\mathcal{H}_1)$. We show that if an injective map $\psi: \mathcal{P}_k(\mathcal{H}_1) \to \mathcal{P}_k(\mathcal{H}_2)$ satisfies two spectrum shrinking conditions, then it is induced by a linear or conjugate-linear isometry. For the second generalization, let $\mathcal{M}$ be a type II$_1$ or type II$_\infty$ factor, let $\tau_\mathcal{M}$ be a faithful normal semi-finite tracial weight of $\mathcal M$, and let $0

Consumptive And Energetic Responses Of Fishes Under Pressure Of Climate Change, Nathan Thomas Hermann

Doctoral Dissertations

Marine organisms are confronted with warming waters due to climate change requiring species to exhibit responses to persist. For many fish, these responses have included range shifts to cooler waters, but are species-specific which may create further disruption through trophic mismatches. To identify potential mismatches and estimate their implications for the quality of consumption within major predators, analyses of predator stomach contents were integrated with reviews of organismal energetics and physiological parameter values. The energy density of prey that is consumed dictates the consequences of consumption, so having data expands general understanding of diet. To that end, published records (n …

Double Segregated Districts And The Persistence Of The Education Debt: A Study In Three Research Essays – Desegregation, The Education Debt, And Brown To Brownsville: A Case Study., Shantel Palacio

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the persistence of double segregation—the racial and socioeconomic isolation of students—in New York City public schools. Using a three-article, mixed-methods design grounded in Gloria Ladson-Billings’ education debt framework, it explores how legal precedent, school-level demographics, and community perspectives interact to sustain unequal educational opportunity.The first article provides a legal-historical analysis tracing desegregation efforts from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to IntegrateNYC v. State of New York (2024). Using the IRAC method, it examines how federal courts shifted from enforcing desegregation to limiting race-conscious remedies, leading advocates to pursue equity through state-based legal strategies. The article highlights the increasing …

Dynamic Defense Strategies For Field Programmable Gate Array (Fpga) Security, Sandeep Sunkavilli

Doctoral Dissertations

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) have gained popularity and usage in recent years, and they have been widely used in mission-critical applications. Due to its popularity, the security of FPGA has become a big concern. Most existing research on FPGA security focuses on hardware Trojans, side-channel attacks, and reverse engineering. The existing FPGA countermeasures against the attacks above are typically limited to the FPGA systems implemented in the old FPGA utilization model. An increase in cloud-based FPGA providers, third-party accelerator suppliers, and open-source FPGAdesign tools has changed the FPGA utilization model, which requires new security measures for modern FPGAs. This …

Investigation Of Elastin-Like Polymer Surfaces By Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy In Redox Mediated And Non-Redox Mediated Electrolytes, Stanley Grant Feeney

Doctoral Dissertations

As the biomedical engineering industry grows, so does the need for on-line, continuous monitoring of specific biomolecules in industrial bioreactors. Elastin-like polymers, a thermoresponsive, protein-based macromolecule that mimics the behavior of the naturally occurring elastin protein, may hold the answer in the form of their stimuli-responsive conformation change. Surface-bound ELPs still require characterization, especially under conditions relevant to on-line sensing in bioreactors. The protocol for fabricating ELP-modified electrodes needs to be fine-tuned for reproducibility, with careful consideration for physisorption. Additionally, bioreactors require carefully controlled environments, without the presence of exogenous reagents. Therefore, the stimuli-responsive behavior of ELPs will need to …

Age Distribution Of Minors Portrayed In Image-Based Sexual Abuse And Child Sexual Abuse Material, Samantha Jean Sutton

Doctoral Dissertations

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) poses a significant threat, especially in the current technological age. A better understanding of victim characteristics is needed to direct investigation and prevention efforts properly. However, determining the age distribution of children in CSAM has been difficult due to numerous factors, including differing laws governing CSAM, the priority placed on investigating younger victims, and the difficulty of determining from images alone the age of young people. This meta-analysis sought to understand the proportion of image abuse victims who are under the age of 13 compared to those who are 13 years or older and whether …

Probing Neutron Star Interiors: Insights Into Asymmetric Dark Matter, Dark Energy, And The Cold Dense Matter Equation Of State, Nathan Rutherford

Doctoral Dissertations

The combination of derived neutron star mass-radius measurements from NASA's Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) mission, constraints from chiral effective field theory (chiEFT), and mass-tidal deformability constraints from gravitational waves has led to significant improvements in the understanding of the cold dense matter equation of state (EoS) of neutron stars. Interestingly, asymmetric dark matter (ADM) and dark energy may also be present within neutron star interiors, potentially impacting their global properties. Taking these effects into account, neutron star measurements can not only offer new insights into the dense matter EoS, but also serve as a hunting ground for dark …

Design And Synthesis Of Single Atom Catalysts For Solar Fuel Generation, Allison Harper St. John

Doctoral Dissertations

Solar fuel generation from photocatalytic carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction is a growing area of interest to mitigate global energy and climate crises. Graphitic carbon nitride (C3N4) is a light-absorbing semiconductor with a promising outlook for solar fuels, gaining popularity in recent years due to its low cost and appropriate band positions for many environmentally relevant reactions. The addition of atomically dispersed single atom catalysts (SACs) to semiconducting materials is a viable strategy for creating active sites to improve photocatalytic performance of the semiconductors studied. Designing C3N4 materials as a support for SACs with well-defined binding motifs and sufficiently high concentrations …

The Role Of The Gut Microbiota In Opioid Use Disorder, Izabella Jannae Sall

Doctoral Dissertations

Opioids are highly effective analgesics for acute and chronic pain management but carry dangerous side effects that limit their utility and increase the risk of opioid use disorder (OUD). Yet not all individuals prescribed opioids develop an OUD, presenting a conundrum: why are so some individuals develop an OUD and others do not? While genetics, social environment, and behavior contribute to risk, they fail to explain why some individuals transition from prescribed use to an OUD. My doctoral research investigates an increasingly likely culprit that is also a promising therapeutic target: the gut microbiota. The gut microbiota is essential for …

Responding To Range Expansion: Assessing Insect Communities, Tree Decline Symptoms, And Tree Mortality Risk As The Southern Pine Beetle Moves North, Caroline Rachel Kanaskie

Doctoral Dissertations

Climate change is shifting species distributions. In New England, warmer winters allow southern species to survive further north. The northward range expansion of the tree-killing southern pine beetle is the focus of this dissertation. Outbreaks of this beetle cause both ecological and economic damage, which threaten the globally rare pine barrens ecosystem. I used an interdisciplinary approach to study this insect: 1) I synthesized literature on the beetle’s natural enemies; 2) I used a suite of chemical attractants to investigate the insect community attracted to the beetle’s pheromones and assessed the diversity and abundance of its potential predators; 3) I …

Molecular Simulation Studies Of Peptide Transport Across The Mitochondrial Membrane, Son Nguyen

Doctoral Dissertations

Molecular transport across membranes is an important biophysical process. Designing molecules capable of crossing cell membranes and targeting specific organelle is becoming necessary in treating many diseases and disorders. In recent decades, cell-penetrating peptides have been studied and utilized to deliver a variety of cargoes. My dissertation work focuses on studying the molecular details of the peptide translocation process across a cell membrane. Specifically, I investigated the dynamics of mitochondrial-targeting peptides and their mechanisms of translocation across the mitomembrane. I conducted molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of model mitochondrial-targeting peptides with distinct physical and chemical properties such as sequence lengths, functional …

The Castle Is Still Here, And Yes, It's Still Scary: Reconstructing The Gothic Through Contemporary Short Story, Alyssa Kilroy

Undergraduate Theses

Since Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto published in 1764, the literary Gothic has grown and spread to include a multitude of subgenres in a variety of formats. Gothic literature has served as both a product and a showcase of its contextual influences, providing a deeper look at humanity's deepest flaws, fears, and passions that shape our societies. While the Gothic's historically fluid identity allows Frankenstein to exist in a literary realm alongside Wuthering Heights, something consistent in its core continues to appeal to modern audiences and remains relevant in contemporary literature and other media. This project offers a …

Scoping Literature Review: The Role Of Leptin In Autism Spectrum Disorder (Asd) And Associated Obesity, Diana B. Riestra, Andrea Iannuzzelli

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

Overweight and obesity (OW/OB) are significant concerns among individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), yet the underlying causes remain unclear. Emerging evidence points to metabolic and hormonal factors—particularly leptin, a hormone involved in appetite regulation—as potential contributors. This scoping review examined five key studies from 2003 to 2024 that investigated the relationship between leptin and ASD in overweight populations. Across studies, individuals with ASD consistently exhibited elevated leptin levels compared to controls. While some findings also noted changes in other adipokines, such as lower resistin or progranulin, leptin was the most consistently dysregulated. These patterns suggest systemic alterations in energy …

Case Report: Alpha Gal Syndrome, Eric Haljasmaa, David Parkes, Wayne Tamaska

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

We report a case of a 40-year-old male who presented with sensation of throat closing and shortness of breath while at work at a meat processing facility. The differential diagnosis of shortness of breath is throat closing includes, but is not limited to, allergic reactions to antibiotics in meat, allergy to food additives, Symptom triggers are useful in identifying causes and a good supporting history and exposures can help with diagnosis. In this case, the patient had a known diagnosis of Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) which is a tick-bite associated, possibly life-threatening immunoglobin E-mediated (IgE) hypersensitivity to galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose (alpha-gal). The patient …

A Case Report Of Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma Presenting With Diabetes Insipidus, Lan Ngo, Adam Kandil

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

Diabetes insipidus (DI) is characterized by decreased secretion or action of antidiuretic hormone (ADH), resulting in polyuria, polydipsia, and potential electrolyte disturbances. Severe hypernatremia secondary to uncontrolled DI can manifest with neurologic symptoms including seizure-like activity. This case report discusses a case of central DI arising from damage to the pituitary gland as the first presentation of a brain tumor, in the context of a 56-year-old patient who presented with seizure-like activity and sensory changes.

Case Report: Ruptured Infrarenal Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm, Jenna Rapone

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

A ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a life-threatening vascular emergency with high mortality rates. We report a case of a 79-year-old male with no reported past medical history but a significant lifelong smoking history who presented to the emergency department with generalized weakness, lower abdominal pain, hypotension, tachycardia, and a reported syncopal episode. Emergency medical services (EMS) found the patient at home during a welfare check, appearing pale and weak. Upon movement from his bed to a stretcher, he experienced a syncopal episode, became tachycardic, and was transiently hypoxic. Initial laboratory studies revealed a hemoglobin of 13 g/dL, hematocrit …