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Associate Of Arts New Degree, Academic Affairs

Program Revisions/Additions

No abstract provided.

Social Justice In The Linguistics Classroom, Reed Blaylock, Miranda Mccarvel, James A. Berry, Evan D. Bradley, Emily Graham, Jill Hallett, Sarah E. Hercula, Lisa Morgan Johnson, Kahdeidra Monét Martin, Ebi Poweigha, Md. Abusalah Sakender, Allison Taylor-Adams

Education and Child Study: Faculty Publications

In the current political and social climate, diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice initiatives in higher education face pushback and at times abolition. Educators within the field of linguistics face a paradox: vulnerability of the classroom versus the fundamental duty to promote linguistic and social justice. This organized session aimed to support community and coalition building, helping linguists build capacity to engage in the work of linguistic and social justice through their teaching. The session was structured into four areas: diversity and inclusion, justice and equity, resistance and response, and lifelong learning and engagement. The first session introduced strategies for decentering …

Platform Polarization?, Matthew B. Lawrence

Emory Law Journal

This Essay explores what the ongoing politicization of Americans’ relationships to and through the technologies they use to interact online might come to mean for the workings of American government and for the constitutional law questions—especially First Amendment and separation-of-power questions—that depend on those workings. James Madison described the workings of government as a function of the interaction of human nature, law, and social movements (factions). From local newspapers to national magazines to radio to broadcast TV to cable news, experience has taught that a fourth variable—the communications technology through which people interact—is also critically important. In the recent era, …

Racial Capitalism And Black Maritime Geography In 19th Century Portland, Maine, Jeremy Harrison

Honors Theses

Portland, Maine, is located on the rocky shores of the Atlantic Ocean and has served as home to a diverse population that has benefited from the economic and social aspects of the shipping and trading industry. This port city in one of the northernmost regions of the United States was one of the last stops for ships carrying goods before reaching the city centers of the Americas and Europe. As a result, during the late 18th and early to mid-19th centuries, skilled and unskilled Black laborers from somewhat fringe regions within the Atlantic migrated to Portland in search of not …

A Regime Of Fear: Barriers To Healthcare Access In Times Of Intensifying Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric And Immigration Enforcement, Kathryn F. Masetti

Honors Theses

The U.S. immigration regime produces the conditions that deny immigrants equitable access to healthcare. The Trump administration’s second term, characterized by aggressive immigration enforcement and anti-immigrant rhetoric, continued to intensify these conditions, contributing to a widespread decline in healthcare utilization by immigrant patients throughout the United States. This thesis investigates how policies and rhetoric from the Trump Administration, including immigration enforcement, shape the barriers that immigrants with and without status encounter when accessing healthcare services in Maine, and how the fear of surveillance, detention, or deportation influences how immigrant communities perceive and utilize healthcare services. Two in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews …

Between Commodity And Culture: Tea Advertising As A Site Of Imperial Ideology And Anti-Colonial Resistance In India, Sydney Pascal

Honors Theses

Between the late nineteenth century and Indian independence in 1947, tea advertising became a key site through which imperial authority and Indian nationalism were negotiated. Drawing on advertisements, trade journals, and visual marketing campaigns produced from the 1880s through the 1950s, this honors thesis argues that tea advertising was a cultural and political mechanism through which the British Empire attempted to normalize imperial consumption and legitimize colonial authority. British campaigns framed tea as modern and routine while obscuring the exploitative labor systems and landscape transformations that sustained plantation production in Assam. As nationalist movements expanded in the early twentieth century, …

Braided Thoughts: Beautifully Indigenous, Trinity Gould

OTD 721: Cultural Responsiveness & Occupation

I am an enrolled tribal member of the Spokane Tribe, and I have cultural ties to the surrounding tribes as well. I have a daughter who is currently a first line descendent of my tribe through me, and I want to tell my daughter the importance of our shared culture.

I want to show her through this zine a snippet of our culture traditions and practices to educate her that our culture is still here and we should be proud of who we are and our culture. I want her to uphold our traditions to carry on to the next …

What If I Fail...?, Benjamin Janke

OTD 721: Cultural Responsiveness & Occupation

The theme of "fear of failure" is a unique field in occupational therapy because of the power it has to completely inhibit or affirm occupational participation. Fear of failure is something that has been a struggle in my past and is still part of my life that I'm trying to work on as a person and as an aspiring occupational therapy practitioner.

Even though failing is difficult and sometimes painful, it's amazing to see what rises in its place with time. Because of how unique our fears and perceptions about failure are, we must utilize cultural humility and holistic care …

The Effects Of Inadequate Training On Knowledge Management Systems: Retention Crisis Of Captains In The United States Army, Lexis R. Grudzinski

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the relationship between the United States Army’s communication strategy in knowledge management for officers and the desires of captains to continue serving beyond their service obligation. Amidst the current retention crisis (Winkie, 2023) at the captain rank, blame often falls on factors outside of the Army’s control. This research, however, seeks to investigate a factor within the Army’s control and offer workable solutions.

For this research, we will use the common definition of knowledge management (KM): the process of creating, capturing, and organizing knowledge within an organization in a way that improves efficiency. KM includes both explicit …

The Relationship Of Federal Title V Funding To Retention And Graduation Rates Of Hispanic-Serving Institutions In The Southeastern United States, Julio Cesar Llanos Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The number of Latino/a or Hispanic students, also known as Latinx students, are expected to grow demographically in various regions of the United States over the next several years. To ensure Latinx students are progressing toward graduation in their respective cohorts, it may be beneficial to anticipate and prepare for the increase in this student demographic. This study focused on institutions in the Southeastern region of the United States. This study compared the relationship of federal Title V funding and retention rates and graduation rates of students; it also compared degrees awarded to Hispanic students and enrollment of Hispanic students …

Ceo's Influence On Top Management Team's Employee Engagement: A Qualitative Study, Wafa Damlaj, Matthew Hurtienne, Laura Hurtienne

Human Resource Development Student Publications and Presentations

This study explores how chief executives officers (CEOs) influence top management team (TMT) members' employee engagement. Using a constructivist phenomenological approach, the research examines ways CEOs shape TMT's employee engagement. Fifteen TMT professionals participated in semi-structured interviews, and the data were analyzed through a three-step coding process: open coding to identify key concepts, axial coding to refine categories by examining relationships, and thematic coding to organize the data into central themes. Findings revealed that CEOs influence TMT's employee engagement by addressing needs at three levels: individual, team, and organizational. Each level of needs aligns with specific CEO leadership styles and …

Bridging The Social Class Capital Gap: A Psychological Intervention In The Newcomer Adjustment Context, Grace J. H. Lim, Marko Pitesa

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by observations that workers from lower social class backgrounds often experience lower career outcomes even after securing desirable jobs, we adopted an abductive approach—combining theory (the newcomer personal capital framework) with qualitative evidence from open‐ended accounts (Study 1)—to identify three challenges these workers face after joining organizations as newcomers: limited cultural capital (i.e., institutional knowledge), lower social capital (i.e., social self‐efficacy), and lower psychological capital (i.e., distress tolerance). Furthermore, in Study 1, we developed and tested a psychological intervention targeting these challenges and found that it effectively addressed them. In Studies 2 and 3, both preregistered field experiments, we …

Fluid Agency In Ai Systems: A Case For Functional Equivalence In Copyright, Patent, And Tort, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems exhibit fluid agency in multi-step workflows: lacking human-like consciousness or culpability, yet they display behavior that is (i) stochastic (probabilistic and path‑dependent), (ii) dynamic (co‑evolving with user interaction), and (iii) adaptive (able to reorient across contexts). These properties generate valuable outputs but collapse attribution, irreducibly entangling human and machine inputs. Doctrines that assume traceable provenance—authorship, inventorship, and liability—fracture under this unmappability, yielding ownership gaps and moral “crumple zones.”This Article argues that only functional equivalence stabilizes doctrine under unmappability: Where provenance is indeterminate, legal frameworks should treat human and AI contributions as equivalent for allocating rights …

The Power Of A Picture: Building Visual Depictions Of The Eppm Bolstering Sunscreen Application Motivation, Ansley M. George

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates visual depictions of efficacy skin cancer health risk messages. Using Witte's Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM) and existing literature on fear appeals and visual persuasion as a theoretical framework, the study aims to explore how self and response efficacy imagery impacts individuals' perceptions of health risk messages in the context of skin cancer prevention when emphasizing specific principles of design. Formative research was employed via qualitative photo sorts and participants were exposed to an assortment of images depicting efficacy in the context of skin cancer prevention where they discussed why they felt they were or were not …

Sexual Dysfunction In Women With Endometriosis In A Low-Middle-Income Country, Edna Chacha, Charles Muteshi, Felix Oindi, Elsie Wandera

Obstetrics and Gynaecology, East Africa

Background Endometriosis affects up to 10% of reproductive-age women and significantly impairs quality of life including sexual function, intimate relationships, fertility, and psychological wellbeing. While its impact has been extensively studied in Western populations, there is limited Sub-Saharan African data exploring how the disease affects female sexual health and distress. This study aimed to assess sexual function and sexual distress among women with endometriosis at a tertiary hospital in Kenya.

Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 108 women aged 18 to 49 with confirmed endometriosis from January to June 2022. The study used validated self-administered questionnaires: Female Sexual Function …

Surgical Interventions For Treating Vesicovaginal Fistula In Women, Yoshiyuki Okada, Tomomi Matsushita, Takeshi Hasegawa, Hisashi Noma, Erika Ota, Bob Achila, Yasukuni Yoshimura

Obstetrics and Gynaecology, East Africa

Objectives This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (intervention). The objectives are as follows:

To assess the benefits and harms of surgical interventions for treating vesicovaginal fistula in women.

Shifting Tide: A Comparative Analysis Of News Coverage Of The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, Devon Skufca, Gloria S. Vaquera

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Internationally, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine has been widely reported for years in mass media. Most recently, the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, again focused international attention on this region. Examining how this conflict has been reported starting October 2023 and for the subsequent eight months provides an opportunity to examine the framing of these events. This comparative study examines two newspapers of record, one from the United States (a known ally of Israel) and the other from Ireland, often seen as more sympathetic toward Palestinian statehood. A total of 179 articles from the New York …

Grading In The Digital Age: Ai Feedback Versus Professor Feedback, Latoya Russell, Andrew Zeisler, Ronald Mickler Jr.

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Feedback is a cornerstone of academic development, particularly in marketing education, where skill development often requires iteration and applied practice. While instructors spend considerable time providing effective feedback, artificial intelligence (AI) tools can significantly reduce this burden by generating timely, tailored responses. For example, AI-based chatbots can supplement instruction, providing students with timely feedback and reducing instructors’ workload. This study examines how marketing students perceive feedback quality based on its source, specifically whether it is delivered by an AI system or a human instructor. Through a scenario-based experiment, we investigate student perceptions of feedback quality and effectiveness based on the …

Analytics And Irony In Organizational Change: Agency And Emotions In The Mangle Of Practice, Uri Gal, Sean Hansen, Kalle Lyytinen

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Advanced data analytics technology has experienced an explosion of interest as firms seek to increase profits, operational efficiency, and employee engagement through evidence-based management. However, empirical evidence of the impact of this technology on organizational outcomes remains mixed, which assertions of benefits closely matched by concerns about potential adverse outcomes. In this study, we explore the adoption of a popular application of analytics technology – a people analytics system – at Everest, a leadership development consulting firm. By juxtaposing idealized and realized facets of the organizational practices mediated by the system, we highlight the emergence of situational ironies, in which …

The Effect Of Sleep Environment On Sleep Quality And Behavior In Firefighters: A Cross-Sectional Study, Jacquelyn N. Zera, Erica Esper, Anna Peluso Simonson, Ashley N. Clausen, Serena Paterno

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Firefighters face high-stress occupational demands and irregular shift work that negatively impact sleep quality, which is intrinsically linked to long-term physical and psychological health. This cross-sectional study examines how the physical sleep environment (home vs. work) and station sleeping arrangements (bunk-style vs. individual dorm-style quarters) influence subjective sleep quality in this population. Sixty-six career firefighters (Age = 40.89 ± 11.05 years), completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) to assess their sleep in both home and fire station environments, with data analyzed using Wilcoxon Signed Ranks and Mann–Whitney U tests. The results reveal significant differences (p < 0.001), with sleep duration, efficiency, subjective quality, and global PSQI scores all performing significantly better at home than at work. Notably, no significant differences were found between bunk-style and dorm-style sleeping quarters at the station. These findings suggest that firefighters experience poorer sleep while on duty regardless of room design, indicating that operational stressors like call volume and nocturnal arousal may be more influential on sleep quality than the physical arrangement of sleeping quarters, and could inform organizational policies and wellness programs aimed at reducing occupational fatigue.

The Red Hands Of Ulster, Philip Metres

2026 Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

Interfaith Transposed: Interfaithlessness In The Age Of Religious Exit, Kristen Tobey

2026 Faculty Bibliography

This article examines so-called interfaithless initiatives in the United States, in which exes from different high-demand religious groups participate together as they navigate the difficult process of religious exit. Sustained attention is focused on an Interfaithless Beach Party held regularly between 2014 and 2022. I argue that associating interfaithlessness with interfaith becomes legible by thinking of interfaithlessness not as peripheral to but rather as a transposition of interfaith. Indeed, these are examples of interfaith encounter at its best, showing not just proximity between exes from different religions, but meaningful interreligious exchange that complicates assumptions about the growing nonreligious population in …

The Hierarchy Of Humanization: A Theory Of Victim Visibility In News Narratives, Maurice Emelu, Chika Nwugo, Regina Tuma, Sean Sims, Mariah Moulds, Elijah Williams, Felipe Covarrubias

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Journalism frames events and distributes human recognition in public discourse, yet little is known about how narrative attention is allocated among individuals within the same event. This study introduces Victim Visibility Theory (VVT), conceptualizing news stories as systems of narrative allocation in which victims receive unequal levels of humanization. Drawing on a content analysis of 433 articles from four U.S. elite newspapers covering 52 victims across four mass shootings, it examines how identity cues, symbolic capital, and structural narrative prominence shape representation. The findings show that humanization is allocated at two levels: first between events, where whole tragedies are humanized …

Exploratory Data Analysis On Stress In America: The Impact Of Health, Age, And Employment, Liv E. Bookhammer, Olivia Turkal, Rebecca Fang

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Over the past few decades, stress levels in America have increased significantly. This study explores the relationship between stress and key demographic and health-related variables using the 2018 Stress in America survey data. The research aims to examine how age, employment status, physical health, mental health, and mental health treatment influence average stress levels in the U.S. Previous studies have highlighted that younger adults, particularly those aged 18-34, experience higher levels of stress, while individuals with employment tend to report greater stress than those without. Furthermore, stress is known to be linked to physical and mental health, with severe stress …

Ben-Porath Dd, Mekhel V, Mekhel R, Ghanem M, Akouri C, Yost Jh. A Cross-Temporal Comparison Of Depression Stigma Among College Students: Gen X Versus Gen Z. J Am Coll Health. 2026, Denise Ben-Porath, Veronica Mekhel, Rebecca Mekhel, Mohammed Ghanem, Celine Akouri, John H. Yost

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine whether undergraduate students today (i.e., Gen Z; born: 1997–2012), exhibited the same level of mental health related stigma when compared with college students, studied approximately two decades ago (i.e., Gen X [born 1965–1980]).

Participants: 379 undergraduate students from a private midwestern university participated in the experiment.

Method: Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes about a fictitious student, “Tom” who either (a) was depressed and sought treatment, (b) was depressed and did not seek treatment, (c) suffered a back injury and sought treatment, or (d) suffered a back …

Comprehensive Psychometric Evaluation Of The Child/Adult And Family Quality Of Life Scale : Third Edition, Thomas Frazier, Nissa Van Etten, Richard M. Kubina Jr, Ben Knaebel, Allison Frazier, Yagnesh Vadgama, Lacey Chetcuti, Mirko Uljarevic

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Purpose Quality of life (QoL) has become a key concept for understanding the impact of neurodevelopmental conditions and for monitoring intervention progress. Existing QoL measures often focus on health-related QoL in neurotypical populations or were developed specifically for autism. The CFQL was designed to bridge this gap. The present study describes evaluation of the second revision of the CFQL - the CFQL-3/AFQL-3.

Methods Psychometric evaluation was conducted in two samples: a large validation sample and a clinical intervention sample.

Results Results indicated a clear factor structure, measurement invariance across demographic and clinical factors, good scale and conditional reliability, adequate or …

Conceptualizing The Receipt Of Unfair School Discipline Through A Betrayal Trauma Lens, Charles Bell, Alexia Angton, Sarah Franklin, Michayla Mack, Pavel Ahmed

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

We contribute to the literature on school discipline by investigating why some Black students, parents, and advocates perceived particular punishments as unfair. Using Betrayal Trauma Theory (BTT) as a framework, we conducted qualitative interviews with twelve Black parents and five community activists who assisted Black children throughout the school discipline process and perceived such punishments as unfair. We also interviewed four Black children who received punishments at school that they perceived as unfair. Participants reported that instances of unfair school punishment created barriers to graduation, criminalized Black students, and permitted victimization to occur on school grounds.

Relationships Between Physical Performance Characteristics And Match Characteristics Of English Academy Soccer Players, B. Dickinson, P. Jones, P. Comfort

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The aim of this study was to determine the relationships between physical performance and match characteristics of Elite academy soccer players using pooled data across U15, U16, U18, U23 age groups. Sixty elite academy soccer players including u15 (Subject: N = 15; age: 14.64 ± 0.25; mass: 59.88 ± 9.12 kg; height: 171 ± 6.69 cm), u16 (Subject: N = 15; age: 15.42 ± 0.36; mass: 65.11 ± 8.70 kg; height: 175 ± 7.21 cm), u18 (Subject: N = 15; age: 17.00 ± 1.00; mass: 72.85 ± 7.43 kg; height: 179 ± 6.43 cm), u23 (Subject: N = 15; age: …

Co-Designing Impact: Student-Led Prevention Messaging For The Primary Prevention Of Violence Against Women, Narelle Lemon, Lisa Holmes, Christina C. Gray, Jason Goopy

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Executive Summary:

Violence against women remains one of Western Australia's most serious and persistent social problems, and young adults aged 18–24 represent a pivotal demographic for primary prevention — the work of stopping violence before it starts. The Co-Designing Impact project, funded by the Department of Communities' Family and Domestic Violence Primary Prevention Grants Program 2024/2026 and delivered in partnership between Yourtoolkit.com and Edith Cowan University (ECU), engaged university students aged 18–24 in a six-session co-design program. Participants learned about the drivers of violence against women and the principles of primary prevention, then co-designed social media messaging intended to shift …

Public Service Motivation And The Circumplex Model Of Affect: Profiling Australasian Public Servants, Esme Franken, Ben Farr-Wharton, Fleur Sharafizad, Kara Ng, Geoff Plimmer, Evan Berman

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper explores public servants’ public service motivation through the prism of the circumplex model of affect (CMA). The application of CMA to work, and specifically public sector contexts, is relatively novel, and the framework helps explain how multiple states of affect (i.e., comprised of underlying feelings, emotions, and moods) cluster together and are shaped by one’s work environment. The mixed method paper begins with a qualitative study of Australasian public servants, presenting evidence of the CMA and its connection to PSM. The subsequent quantitative analysis of 222 survey respondents offers four distinct latent profiles of public servants’ PSM and …