Digital Commons Network^™

"A Door To The Future." A Case Study In Exploratory And Culturally Sustaining Theater Curriculum, Verónica Meza

Dissertations

This study addresses the persistent inequities in access to quality arts education for Latino immigrant and linguistically diverse communities in California. Despite progressive initiatives such as Proposition 28 (The Arts and Music in Schools Act) and the California Arts Council's Racial Equity Statement, systemic barriers prevent Latino and immigrant students from benefiting equitably from the arts. The central objective of this project is to understand how an exploratory, culturally sustaining theater curriculum can serve as a transformative and healing vehicle for adult immigrant Latino students, providing emotional protection, cultural affirmation, and language preservation within a U.S. educational context. This qualitative …

Rewriting The Plan: Environmental Justice, Community Resistance, And Governance Power In Hollister, California, Rolan Resendiz

Dissertations

This dissertation examines how community-led resistance in Hollister, California, challenged environmental injustice and infrastructure governance through grassroots civic action. Focusing on the Hollister Guardians, a coalition of primarily Latinx residents who organized in response to concerns about the city’s sewer system, this qualitative case study introduces the Critical Just Sustainability Policy Praxis (CJSPP) framework, developed by integrating Critical Policy Analysis and the Just Sustainability Paradigm with a praxis-oriented focus on community action. Using critical document analysis of city council meeting minutes, local media coverage, and community-authored texts mainly from 2023 to 2025, the study explores how policy discourse, institutional decision-making, …

Guru Shishya Parampara: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Character Development Through Immersion, Shilpan Sheth

Dissertations

Processes that support the intentional effort to manifest virtue remain an under-described and poorly understood area of education research. In the literature, it is identified that immersion - a state of deep affective or cognitive engagement with one’s environment - holds implications for character development. Exploring the guru shishya parampara ((गुरुिश� पर�रा), a pedagogical tradition with roots in Vedic culture, through the lived experiences of an expert musician, this study relates immersive experiences to personal transformation. Data from interviews, lectures, and articles were analyzed. From the data, immersive experiences of the guru shishya tradition are understood to be embodied, intrinsic, …

Inferring Host Environment Properties And Gravitational-Wave Decay Time From The Eccentricity Measurement Of Dynamically Captured Binaries, A. Vincent Paul, Parthapratim Mahapatra, Marc Favata, K. G. Arun

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Dynamical capture in dense stellar environments is a promising channel for producing eccentric compact binary mergers. Although there have been no confident detections of eccentric mergers to date, a few candidates show indications of nonnegligible in-band eccentricity upon reanalysis of the data. By assuming an observed eccentric event originates from a dynamical gravitational-wave (GW) capture, we show that it is possible to identify the host environment using the eccentricity and mass posteriors. In particular, the eccentricity posterior can be mapped to posteriors on key capture parameters, such as the relative velocity at infinity and the impact parameter. By comparing these …

Ensuring Effective, Efficient, And Equitable Libraries In A Post-Pandemic Community College Environment, Jeffery M. Sundquist

Dissertations

Using a case study model, this dissertation investigated student needs regarding library support in a post-pandemic community college environment, using data from student focus group interviews. These needs were juxtaposed with perceived student needs using library employee survey data. Based on the interpretation of data grounded in a critical librarianship framework, the author created action items for college library leaders. To provide effective, efficient, and equitable onsite libraries and library services, the author recommends (a) designing for psychological safety and belonging, (b) embedding visible human support, and (c) conducting equity-oriented space audits. To provide effective, efficient, and equitable online libraries …

Effective Strategies For Hospital Leaders To Increase Employee Retention, Lionso Gomez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee retention remains a critical challenge for hospital leaders because high turnover can contribute to workforce instability, increased organizational costs, and poor patient care quality. The purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry research project was to identify and explore effective strategies that hospital leaders in Texas use to increase employee retention. The participants were six former hospital leaders in Texas's eastern and southern regions who had successfully implemented employee retention strategies. This research project was grounded in Herzberg’s two-factor theory. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and publicly available documents. The data were analyzed utilizing Braun and Clarke’s six-step thematic …

The Experiences Of Deaf American Muslims In Their Pursuit And Retention Of Employment, Shukry Mahmood

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Deaf American Muslims in the United States face high levels of unemployment. They often experience compounded marginalization at the intersection of disability, religion, and cultural identity, which often leads to exclusion and underrepresentation in employment contexts. The purpose of the study was to explore the lived experiences while pursuing and retaining employment in the United States of deaf Muslims in United States workplaces. In this qualitative study, a self-designed, semistructured interview protocol with open-ended questions was used to explore these experiences. The sample of 12 participants was selected based on their self-identification as deaf American Muslims with at least 30 …

Multiple Perspectives On Inclusion In Science For Students Receiving Support From The Learning Center (Tlc) Program, Jeremy C. Adams

Dissertations

Almaden Country Day School (ACDS) is a small, independent private school located in the Almaden Valley neighborhood of south San Jose, California. Currently serving over 400 students, the school has been in operation for over 43 years. Nan Hunter, its founder, set out to build a school community that could “discover the gifts in every child.” As part of this mission, the school sought to support neurodiverse students with accommodations as part of its general education program. In September of 2017, the school’s leaders committed more deeply to this aspect of the school’s mission when they opened The Learning Center …

Out Of The Briar Patch: Storying Resistance Among Black Male Survivors Of Childhood Sexual Abuse And Its Impact On Their Educational Experiences, Anthony Animuntu

Dissertations

This study examines the lack of support within educational settings for Black boys who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Despite growing attention to trauma-informed practices, the experiences of Black male survivors remain largely absent from educational research. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach informed by critical autoethnography, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five African American men reflecting on their schooling experiences as CSA survivors. Axial analysis revealed four central themes: silence as survival and strategic invisibility, shame and internalized distress, institutional misrecognition, and the transformative role of relational care and educational kinship. Findings indicate that participants’ trauma was often …

Breaking The Glass Ceiling From The Ground Floor: Bipoc Women Classified Professionals’ Journey In California Community Colleges, Lusyna Kim Narvaez

Dissertations

This phenomenological study examined how women in classified professional positions navigate institutional barriers and access professional development within California community colleges. Using Critical Liberatory Feminist Pedagogy, Critical Race Feminist Theory, and Challenging Leadership Theory as analytical frameworks, the study explored the lived experiences of 18 participants across five Northern California community colleges through individual interviews and focus groups. Findings revealed three central themes: strategic communication as a survival mechanism, institutionalized exhaustion, and professional development as gatekeeping. Participants described employing calculated communication strategies to navigate workplace dynamics while minimizing personal and professional risk. The study illuminated how institutional structures create systemic …

Understanding The Impact Of Transfer Orientation Leadership: Student Leader Perspectives At A Mid-Sized California University, Kaci Taylor Turpin

Dissertations

Community college transfer students represent a vital source of diversity for public four-year institutions; at the same time, declining enrollments heighten the need for stronger, more functional transfer pathways between community colleges and four-year universities, especially given the significant vertical transfer gap and the unique barriers transfer students face in student leadership roles. This semi-structured interview study explored the experiential knowledge of 14 first-generation transfer student orientation leaders to understand how they navigate institutional barriers in their on-campus employment. Findings reveal that these leaders navigated institutional barriers by relying on peer networks and drawing heavily on their navigational capital. Furthermore, …

Reskilling And Retraining The Water Technology Workforce: An Agentic Generative Ai Framework For Water Purification, Nano‑Mems, And Curriculum Development, Satyadhar Joshi, Noor Zulfiqar

Harrisburg University Other Works

The rapid digitalization of water infrastructure is bringing artificial intelligence, advanced sensing, and membrane materials science into routine water treatment practice. At the same time, utilities, regulators, and training institutions face a persistent workforce challenge: many operators, engineers, and managers are being asked to adopt data-driven tools without a coherent educational pathway that links AI literacy to real treatment workflows. This article synthesizes recent literature on agentic generative AI, reinforcement learning, smart sensing, nano-enabled membranes, and digital twins for water systems, then translates those developments into a structured reskilling model for the water sector. The proposed framework is organized around …

Third Amended Chapter 11 Plan Filed By The Official Committee

Catholic Dioceses in Bankruptcy

No abstract provided.

Intouch Week Of July 27, 2026, New York Medical College

InTouch

• NYMC Receives $2.7 Million HECap Award
• The Inquiring Minds of Student Research
• Grasslands Garden Blooms into a Community Gathering Space
• Incoming M.D. Students Celebrate Completion of Pre-Matriculation Program
• White Plains Youth Bureau Explore Health Care Careers at NYMC
• Hispanics with Met-ALD Face Higher Rates of Serious Liver Complications
• TCDM Welcomes Class of 2030
• Faculty Spotlight: Jin Li, M.D., Ph.D. ’01: A Lifetime Dedicated to Neurology, Education, and Community Service

Construct Overlap Inflates Apparent Economic-Capacity Alignment: Evidence From A Hebei City Panel, 2014–2023, Shuo Pang, Jianguang Hou, Danlin Yu

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Index-based urban sustainability studies often ask whether urban resilience and economic development evolve harmoniously, but the answer is unreliable when the two constructs contain the same economic indicators. A targeted audit of recent Chinese coupling studies shows that economic variables are commonly embedded in urban-resilience systems without a reported construct-overlap weight check. Using Hebei, China, as a measurement-validity test rather than as another provincial economic-growth case, this study analyzes a balanced 2014–2023 panel of 11 prefecture-level cities. Duplicated economic concepts account for 44.4% of the baseline resilience-index entropy weight and 88.2% of the baseline economic-index weight, indicating substantial mechanical exposure …

Application Of Machine Learning For Correcting Defect-Induced Neuromorphic Circuit Inference Errors, Vedant V. Sawal, Hiu Yung Wong

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This paper presents a machine learning-based approach to correct inference errors caused by stuck-at faults in fully analog ReRAM-based neuromorphic circuits. Using a Design-Technology Co-Optimization (DTCO) simulation framework, the study models and analyzes six spatial defect types - circular, circular-complement, ring, row, column, and checkerboard - across multiple layers of a multi-array neuromorphic architecture for handwritten digit recognition tasks. It is demonstrated that the proposed correction method, which employs a lightweight neural network trained on the circuit's 10 output voltages, can improve inference accuracy from 55% to 90% (+ 35 percentage points) in highly degraded defective scenarios. Results show that …

Childcare Center Administrators’ Leadership Practices To Foster Childcare Worker Retention In Non-Residential Childcare Centers, Rebecca Dececco

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Though staff retention is essential for children's stability and security in childcare settings, there remains a gap in knowledge about the leadership practices in childcare that have implications for retaining staff. The problem addressed in this study was the need for information about the influence of leadership practices on childcare teacher retention in the United States. Grounded in Bandura’s social cognitive theory, the purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore the leadership practices of childcare center administrators who retain childcare staff. For this basic qualitative design, semistructured interviews were conducted with 12 childcare center administrators who worked directly …

Mountains And Mythology: Folklore In The Alps, Arya Karki

Honors Projects

From nature spirits to secret doorways, an air of mystery and magic surrounds the mountains of Austria. All over the world, mountain ranges inspire rich folklore, each set of tales unique to its respective culture. The purpose of this Honors Project is to answer the question: how does mountain-inspired folklore mirror cultural values and fears? A comparative analysis between Austrian Alpine and American Appalachian folktales is conducted in order to isolate the variables that cause folklore to differ region-to-region. Through research consisting of primary-source folklore anthologies, secondary texts on mountain theory, and direct observation from a study abroad experience, this …

The Hootenanny Heard 'Round The World: Broadside Magazine's Musical Coverage Of The Vietnam War, Rebecca Elizabeth Law

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Broadside Magazine was printed out of an apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City from 1962 to 1988. Its content was primarily reader-submitted songs, poems, sheet music, and editorial commentary. This magazine displays the intersection between music and journalism through folk music. Singer/songwriters of the day were concerned about the news of the time and used music to express their opinions, unify a movement, and spread the news. The contributors, often called “Broadsiders,” were especially concerned with the Vietnam War. This research provides a qualitative analysis of songs and poems published in issues 50 through 100, printed between 1964 …

The Illusion Of The Witch: Social Corruption And Visual Corruption In Francesco Maria Guazzo's Compendium Maleficarum, Alexis Marie Coleman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The ideological and visual construction of the witch reached its peak during the early modern period when the witch-hunting craze claimed the lives of thousands. This thesis visually and textually analyzes the 1608 witch-hunting treatise the Compendium Maleficarum by Francesco Maria Guazzo, especially considering the Compendium’s images and their inversion of holy Christian and Greco-Roman art to create images depicting socially corrupt behavior, as well as considering some of their connections to other early modern art that sought to label specific populations as dangerous to society. Books I and II of the Compendium are specifically discussed in relation to their …

A Literature Study On Collaborative Art Learning In Tasikmalaya Based On Paulo Freire's Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, Wan Ridwan Husen, M. Fahmi Nugraha

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

This study examines collaborative dialogical learning in art education based on Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy. It aims to explore how the concept of collaboration can be integrated into school-based art learning by utilizing the cultural assets of Tasikmalaya as a contextual framework. This research employs a literature study method by analyzing primary sources, particularly Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, along with secondary literature from academic journals related to critical pedagogy and art education. The analysis focuses on identifying key principles of dialogical learning and their relevance to collaborative practices in art education. The findings indicate that Freire's concept of …

“The Daemons Of Unplumbed Space”: Einsteinian Portals Into The Unknown In Paul W. S. Anderson’S Event Horizon And H.P. Lovecraft’S The Dreams In The Witch House, Kristine Larsen

Mythcon

Jason Colavito notes that “cosmic horror” developed in response to the counterintuitive and unsettling repositioning of space and time within Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity, as embodied in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The horror of such a “weird tale” derives from the violation of already unnatural seeming physical law by the influence of super-natural powers. Lovecraft himself defined a weird tale as containing at least a hint of a “suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature, which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.” Surely the singularity of …

Today’S Christianity: Are We In The Mirror Universe? A Comparison Of Petrine Christianity And The Gospel Of Mary Via The Heroine’S Journey, Blythe A. Collier

Mythcon

What if there was an alternative to Joseph Campbell’s so-called ‘Monomyth’? What if we could dodge yet another rehash of the tired old trope of an oversimplified, Eurocentric ‘Hero’s Journey’? The monomyth is often considered the sine qua non of archetypal modern Western literature. We can easily pick out some of its described elements within both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Silmarillion, and in C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series—as well as within Petrine Christianity, which is the mythic structural basis of both the contemporary bible, and also the fabled worlds of Tolkien and Lewis.

But …

The God Machine: Environmental Resonances In Tolkien And Hollow Knight: Silksong, Alicia Fox-Lenz

Mythcon

After reading The Lord of the Rings, it would not be surprising for the reader to assume Tolkien was a luddite or at very least had some deep-rooted environmentalist leanings. After all, the anti-industrialist sentiment is one of the many themes that so enamored his American fans in the 1960s. In LOTR, industry (as opposed to craft) is aligned with evil, most notably through Saruman — a failed craftsman who has turned to machination. Through him, we see the industrialization of Isengard and its deleterious effects on nearby Fangorn, as well as the resulting destruction of the failed …

The Harlequinades: Agatha Christie’S Forays Into Fantasy, Joe R. Christopher

Mythcon

This review by Joe R. Christopher explores Agatha Christie’s long engagement with the Commedia dell’Arte tradition - referenced in current popular culture through figures such as the Batman series’ Harlequin character – and traces how elements of that fantasy appear throughout her early poetry and some of her short-fiction work. Her Harlequinade foray was in a self- funded volume of poems, some of which read as autobiographical. The evocation of wandering ancient, semi-immortal spirits may reflect a business trip taken with her first husband. Christie extends the Commedia motifs into her prose where she introduces recurring characters; notably, a character, …

Assessing A Fourth Trimester Support Group Using An Adapted Ripple Effects Mapping, Kayleigh Gregory, Aubrey Jones, Isabel Paulk, Krysten Munn, Karli Adams, Diana Frankenburger

Transforming Communities

Purpose: Maternal mental health disparities warrant attention, particularly as rural communities face substantial barriers to timely screening and treatment. The Fourth Trimester group at the University of Kentucky was established in April 2022 to address the need for additional postpartum support. This qualitative study examined participants’ perspectives on the group.

Method: Participants included 8 mothers who engaged in the online fourth-trimester social support group. Data were collected using an adapted ripple effects mapping via semi-structured interviews.

Findings: Results of the thematic content analysis revealed six key themes: (1) Community and Belonging, (2) Circle of Wisdom, (3) Empowerment, (4) Practical Support, …

Mythopoeic Awards Finalists Discussion, David Lenander, Grace Moone

Mythcon

General Discussion of the Finalists for the 2026 Mythopoeic Awards. We expect some committee members to offer their opinions and experiences and invite others to share their reactions to the books! Discussion of the awards process and suggestions for the future are also in order. Find out how to become involved for next year. What books did we miss?

Sense Of Safety And Quality Of Life Among Immigrants, Rachel Gomez

McNair Scholars Research

This study examined the relationship between sense of safety and quality of life among Hispanic/Latinx immigrant communities. The study sought to determine whether perceived sense of safety was associated with quality of life and whether differences existed based on immigration status, gender, and age. A quantitative, non-experimental survey design was used with a convenience sample of 33 first- and second-generation Hispanic immigrants from Arkansas. Participants completed a survey combining the Immigrant Enforcement Fear Scale and the 10-Item Well-being Instrument, which were translated into Spanish to increase accessibility. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficients and independent-samples t-tests with an alpha …

Oregon State Rank Assessment For Alpine Smelowskia (Smelowskia Ovalis), Lindsey K. Wise

Institute for Natural Resources Publications

Oregon state conservation status assessment for Alpine smelowskia (Smelowskia ovalis) using NatureServe methodology, 2026.

Developing And Testing Visualization Simulations For The Gamma-Ray Energy Tracking Array (Greta), Blake Mcnulty

Physics and Astronomy Summer Fellows

GRETA is a recently-completed Department of Energy-funded project to construct an array of 120 gamma-ray detectors for use in nuclear physics experiments. The Gretina Array was the successful pilot project to construct 48 of the eventual 120 detectors that would be used in the array. UCGretina is a program that is used to simulate the GRETA array for the purposes of planning experiments and analyzing measurements. My job for this summer, with the advent of the full GRETA system, was to implement the new modular mounting structure for the full GRETA array in the simulation code. This involves creating the …