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A More Robust Ethics: The Weakness And Theistic Dependence Of Godless Normative Realism, Micah Andrew Pycraft

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation is centered on the metaethics and moral ontology of Erik Wielenberg. The central task of the dissertation is to examine Wielenberg’s metaethical view termed “Godless Normative Realism” and ascertain the ontological implications therein. I contend that Wielenberg’s moral ontology ultimately fails to establish moral realism and aspects of his metaethics are better explained by the existence of God rather than his non-existence.

Chapter One presents Erik Wielenberg’s metaethics within the background of the historical progression of moral ontology and contemporary approaches to moral realism. Tracing from ancient foundations of theistic moral realism I show how moral antirealism grew …

Wmu Board Of Trustees Formal Session Thursday June 26, 2025, Wmu Board Of Trustees

WMU Board of Trustees Meetings

Acceptance of the Agenda
Approval of the Minutes (April 17, 2025 and April 23, 2025)
Remarks by the Chair of the Board
Remarks by the President
Updates by the Faculty Senate President
Updates by the Western Student Association President
Updates by the Graduate Student Association President
Western Michigan University Employee Graduates
Montgomery Essential Needs Program Presentation
Public Comments Regarding Action Items

Action Items

• Academic Tenure and Promotion
• Student Housing and Meal Rates 2025/26
• Fall 2025 Differential Tuition Rates
• Fall 2025 Tuition and Required Fee Rates
• General Fund Fiscal Year 2025/26 Operating Budget
• President Emeritus Status for Edward Montgomery

Consent Items …

Art As 'Seeing Business', Geoff Buchan

Talking Heads Seminar Series

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds – R D Laing Art as ‘Seeing Business’ into a positive participatively planned future. In the mid 1970s, privileged experiences with respected Kimberley Lawmen of high degree gave me a new life purpose. I learnt a new, systemic paradigm for survival through art, and a reason to use my visual talent in society …

Video: A Media Revolution?

Communication Research Trends

Revolutions connected with technical inventions have been proclaimed, rightly and wrongly, so often in the recent past that it would seem appropriate to look for another expression just to avoid the danger of trivialization. But all the evidence says that this time we are in the presence of a real revolution and that we should call it by its name.

As a true revolution, the emergence of video has been like an explosion, full of energy and even passion, provoking divisions, inflicting wounds, destroying, upsetting and, also, raising hopes and promising new riches in the so-called "television wasteland". It will …

Noverre’S Lament: Inscription, Posterity, And The Ephemeral Art Of Dance, Olivia Sabee

Dance Faculty Works

Jean-Georges Noverre defined pantomime ballet, or ballet d’action, as an ephemeral art. In his published writings, Noverre argued that to notate a ballet’s movement was both inadequate – in that the present day’s dance notation could not record a pantomime ballet – and inappropriate – in that the passions, the core of pantomime ballet, could not be recorded as discrete, repeatable units the way steps could have been. At the same time, Noverre was deeply invested in posterity, both his own, and that of pantomime ballet as a form. This essay examines the values of ephemerality and posterity in …

The Gift Shop - Celebrates (A Journey Just Begun)

University anniversary celebration materials

No abstract provided.

Interpersonal Communication

Communication Research Trends

The story is told of a novice interpreter who once translated the English Biblical phrase 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak' into Russian as 'The vodka is excellent, but the meat is bad'!

Translation is not simply a problem for professional interpreters. All of us have to translate what other people are saying into words we can understand. More often than not we translate badly and the intended message is misunderstood. Even when talking with our closest friends and immediate family we can find ourselves struggling to reach a common understanding. How often is our speech littered …

Limb Light - Interactive Lighting Control, Joseph Pandit, Matthew Tran

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The progression of stage lighting in the modern age has significantly influenced the immersive experience of the audience. Through events like Daft Punk’s 2006 Cochella performance, lighting has become more pivotal to performances in every genre. However, interactive, customized lighting remains inaccessible to small and mediumscale performers. The cost of hiring a lighting director or pre-programing each song is simply too much. Current cost effective solutions, like sound-activated effects, lack in both quality and real-time emotional responsiveness.

This thesis presents an interactive lighting control system designed to bridge this gap and create a novel creative tool. Our approach integrates MIDI-triggered …

Irish Dance: An Inclusive Approach, Sharon E. Phelan

International Symposium of Adapted Physical Activity and International Symposium on Physical Activity and Visual Impairment and Deafblindness

This practical session provides teaching methods, which teachers can use to teach folk-dance to people of all ability levels. During the session, the participants learn to Irish dance through their senses of touch and hearing, as well as sight. They also learn to Irish dance using their upper bodies. These approaches enable everybody to Irish dance, irrespective of their levels of sight, hearing and mobility.

Review Of “Pathway To The Stars: 100 Years Of The Royal Canadian Air Force” By Michael Hood And Tom Jenkins, Randall Wakelam

Canadian Military History

Review of Pathway to The Stars: 100 Years of the Royal Canadian Air Force by Michael Hood and Tom Jenkins

Review Of "Boosters And Barkers: Financing Canada’S Involvement In The First World War" By David Roberts, Bradley Shoebottom

Canadian Military History

Review of Boosters and Barkers: Financing Canada’s Involvement in the First World War by David Roberts

Through The Eyes Of A Guard: Watson Kirkconnell And Great War Internment In Canada, Daniel R. Meister

Canadian Military History

Histories of internment in Canada have paid much attention to internees’ experiences but far less to those of the guards. Correcting this trend, this article offers a detailed case study of one soldier, Watson Kirkconnell, who worked at the Fort Henry and Kapuskasing internment camps. Drawing on his valuable but heretofore unutilised archive of material, this article provides a vivid social history of the camps through Kirkconnell’s eyes. Nuancing the historiography of wartime internment, this article demonstrates how commandants determined the experiences of both internees and guards alike and, at the same time, that staff could sometimes mitigate their superior’s …

2025-06-20 Agenda Book, Morehead State University. Board Of Regents.

Morehead State Board of Regents Agenda Books and Meeting Minutes

Agenda booklet for the Board of Regents meeting of June 20, 2025, which includes the minutes of the meeting held on March 28, 2025.

Off-Site Construction Smes Transition To Net-Zero, Nwakaego Onyenokporo, Patricia Tzortzopoulos Prof., Sara Biscaya, Tamiris Capellaro Ferreira, Nic Clear Prof., Rakesh Mishra Prof.

CIB Conferences

With the imperative to combat climate change and achieve net-zero targets by 2050, the construction industry faces growing pressure to adopt sustainable practices and reduce carbon emissions. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute the majority of the industry, often lack the resources and expertise to make this transition effectively. This paper investigates how off-site construction SMEs can implement actions to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, focusing on the integration of sustainable practices through Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Lean principles within a small off-site construction company. Using an action research approach, the study employed iterative cycles of planning, action, and …

Optimizing Responsive Hospital Operations: A New Process For Simulating Uncertain Treatment Demand, Jiaqi Suo, Claudio Martani, Hazar Dib

CIB Conferences

Hospitals face growing challenges in optimizing resource allocation to meet diverse stakeholder demands under conditions of uncertainty and variability. A pioneering approach to address this issue was recently introduced by Suo et al. (2024b), which, despite its contributions, relied on a limited and predefined set of demand scenarios due to the difficulty of realistically generating a demand model that accurately reflects the highly dynamic nature of real hospital demand. To overcome this challenge, this study presents a novel process that utilizes the Monte Carlo method to model and forecast hospital treatment demand. The process is demonstrated through the simulation of …

Empowering Tanzanian Education: Personalized And Accessible Test Preparation, Brian Wiebe, Shiv Jhalani

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Only 20% of students performed well enough on their secondary exams to continue their A-level studies. This challenge exists due to a lack of resources, classroom overcrowding, and absenteeism of the instructors. The project focuses on improving the pass rate for these national exams; we have built an intelligent quiz generating platform that helps Tanzanian students prepare more effectively for exams by meeting user needs including active recall, answer explanations, increasing difficulty, and filtered studying. Students can select the subject, form level, topic, and the difficulty level, and the platform provides different types of questions, including true/false, multiple choice, and …

The Minutes Of The Marshall University Staff Council Meeting, June 2025, Marshall University Staff Council

Staff Council Minutes

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of Violence Sustained By Nursing And Midwifery Students, Kevin Hambridge, Matt Carey, Francis Thompson

School of Nursing and Midwifery

AbstractBackgroundMany laws exist which protect healthcare personnel from violence within the workplace. Evidence suggests that violence towards nursing students continues and remains unreported. These violent incidents have been proven to have psychological effects.AimsThe aim of the study was to identify the extent, type and impact of violence and aggression sustained by nursing and midwifery students.MethodsA cross-sectional questionnaire survey was employed in a UK University to investigate the violence and aggression sustained by 369 pre-registration nursing and midwifery students.FindingsIn total, 54.7% (n=202) of students reported sustaining violence or aggression in their current academic year. This included verbal violence and aggression (92.7% …

Patient Experiences After Open Heart Surgery: A Qualitative Systematic Review, Halil Kaya, Orachorn Lumprom, Patricia Schofield, Matt Carey, Jos Latour

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Aim: The aim of this systematic review was to synthesise findings from qualitative studies exploring patients' experiences in hospital or at home following open-heart surgery.Methods: Systematic searches were conducted in CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, ProQuest Dissertation and Theses, and Web of Science, covering the period from 2006 to 2023. Studies were selected if they reported a qualitative inquiry into patients’ experiences after open-heart surgery. The quality of eligible studies was assessed using the JBI Critical Appraisal tool. A metaaggregation approach was used to synthesise the findings.Results: Twenty-one studies were included, representing 266 patients across 10 countries. Findings were aggregated into five …

Negotiating Musical Practices In Chilean Prisons During Pinochet’S Dictatorship (1973-1990), Nuria Bonet

School of Art, Design and Architecture

Music played many roles in detention centres during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990), as political prisoners played, listened to, wrote, and taught music. Testimonies of survivors describe a variety of musical practices which reflect the political and social realities of their incarceration. While authorities used music to torture and degrade political prisoners, music was also a tool for communication, community-building, catharsis, and entertainment. Who was allowed to play, hear, and choose music in these spaces – and why - is a complex question which reveals narratives of resistance and oppression, while questioning ideas of musical taste in relation to …

John Seitz, Iv V. East Nottingham Township

2025 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

A Tragedy Of Incommensurability: Indigenous Rights And The Limits Of Human Rights Law, Zeina Ali

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the tragedy of incommensurability between indigenous rights and international human rights law. Despite the emergence of frameworks like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), indigenous calls for sovereignty remain fundamentally unintelligible within a liberal order structured to preserve settler-state legitimacy. Tracing the historical and theoretical evolution of indigenous advocacy, this study critiques the strategic shift from demands for self-determination to claims of cultural rights. It argues that this shift offers no real alternative: self-determination and cultural rights are functionally equivalent, as both are ultimately filtered through legal and political frameworks that cannot …

The Common Law And Sec Rule 10b-5(B): Narrowing The Securities "Fraud" Exception To The First Amendment, Matthew Lambertson

Florida Law Review

Courts have read Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and regulations promulgated thereunder as requiring less than every element of common law fraud. In particular, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 10b-5(b), which prohibits merely false or misleading statements about securities, often proscribes and deters speech that does not constitute common law fraud. Namely, in prosecuting a Rule 10b-5(b) claim, the SEC currently does not need to prove reliance, causation, and harm—three essential elements of common law fraud. Though the First Amendment generally protects false speech, it does not shield fraud. Upon adopting the First Amendment, …

Teachers’ Experiences With Researched-Based Programs And Strategies To Help Struggling Readers In Grades 6–8, Ebony Camille Dixon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem in this qualitative study was that adolescent students in Grades 6–8 in a rural district in the southeastern United States were struggling with reading and had inadequate reading comprehension achievement. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to investigate how teachers implemented researched-based practices of reading intervention programs and the strategies they deemed beneficial to use while aiding struggling students. Marzano’s nine instructional strategies were used to frame the study. The 12 participants were reading teachers, interventionists, and specialists. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews and were analyzed using thematic analysis with open and axial coding. The …

Medst 343w - Nonfiction Forms (8 Week Async Section), Ash Marinaccio

Open Educational Resources

In this course, we will explore how various forms of nonfiction storytelling represent reality and shape our understanding of the world. Over the semester, we will examine how “the real” is represented across different mediums, including theatre, film, photography, and literature. Through critical readings, case studies, creative exercises, and Brightspace discussions, we will examine the intricate interplay between truth, ethics, form, and authorship in documentary and nonfiction works.

The course is divided into five units. The first unit introduces foundational questions of ethics, authorship, and cultural responsibility in nonfiction storytelling. The following units focus on specific forms: documentary theatre, nonfiction …

Gnsi Decision Brief: The Golden Dome For America, Todd Schmidt, Heather Ward, Tad Schnaufer Ii

GNSI Decision Briefs

The Iron Dome for America, now referred to as the Golden Dome, is a proposed concept for a $175 billion, multi-layered shield intended to protect the U.S. from advanced missile threats, including ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles. Announced by President Donald Trump in early 2025, the system is envisioned as a technological leap forward, drawing on space-based sensors, interceptors, and artificial intelligence to create a continental-scale missile defense system.

Lawrence University One Hundred Seventy-Sixth Commencement, Sunday, June 15, 2025, Lawrence University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

The Potential For Improv As A Therapeutic Tool In The Context Of Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Suggestions For Dbt Clinicians, Jocelyn Borden

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores the theoretical and practical intersections between improvisational theater and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), proposing that the core tenets of improv closely align with the philosophical foundation and therapeutic goals of DBT. Aimed at mental health professionals, this work provides a conceptual framework and praxis for incorporating improv-based activities into DBT skills training to enhance client engagement, experiential learning, and emotional resilience. Through an examination of improv theory, parallels with DBT principles, and practical suggestions for integration, the thesis outlines how applied improvisation can be used as a supplemental tool in traditional DBT treatment. The final section includes …

Narrativas Y Convergencias Transdisciplinarias: Contribuciones Académicas Relevantes, Desafíos Y Horizonte Editorial, Cristo Leon Ph.D.

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

La Revista de Estudios sobre Juegos de Rol y STEAM (JRPSSTEAM) se ha consolidado como un espacio transdisciplinario, multilingüe y de acceso abierto que articula investigación, práctica y comunidad en torno a los juegos de rol. En esta editorial, se reflexiona sobre los aprendizajes y patrones emergentes de los tres volúmenes y cinco números publicados hasta la fecha, abordando tanto aciertos como áreas de mejora. Se ofrecen lineamientos prácticos para autores potenciales, destacando errores comunes, criterios de relevancia temática y aspectos que enriquecen la comunicación entre disciplinas. Además, se revaloriza el carácter abierto e inclusivo del JRPSSTEAM, que acoge desde …

Sex And Control In Redeemer Georgia, Anthony Michael Kreis

Georgia State University Law Review

This Essay explores the interplay of history, law, and morality behind the first abortion law in Georgia. Examining the philosophical underpinnings of liberty and equality as articulated in Georgia’s constitutional history through time, this Essay highlights the moral contradictions inherent in the legal frameworks of Reconstruction Georgia. The origin of Georgia’s 1876 abortion law contains multitudes—rooted in race-based contestations for political power, the sociological evolution of medical practice, and evolving attitudes on individual rights. At times, White elites used abortion to attack Yankee culture and stir up racist fears about moral contagion associated with Radical Republicans. To this end, when …