Digital Commons Network^™

Beyond The Classroom: Examining The Relationship Between Student Engagement, Academic Motivation, And Retention, Jeanine Marie Dinardo

Theses and Dissertations

Student retention rates at community colleges have remained low across the United States in recent years. Student engagement is important because it increases motivation and improves academic performance and retention. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationships between student engagement, academic motivation, academic performance, and retention among students at a small community college in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The study was guided by self-determination theory. The sample consisted of 80 community college students. Data were collected through a questionnaire given to participants through their college email. The data were collected using SurveyMonkey and …

Cultural Heritage Curriculum And Student Identity Development: A Mixed-Methods Study, Alexus Corley

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to examine the influence of a cultural heritage curriculum on first-grade students’ cultural knowledge, awareness, and understandings of culture. Specifically, the study investigated the extent to which participation in a 4-week cultural heritage curriculum influenced students’ knowledge of cultural history and contemporary contributors, their understandings and perspectives about culture, and the convergence of quantitative and qualitative findings.

Using a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods research design, the study was conducted with 19 first-grade students enrolled in a Title I elementary school in Central Florida. Quantitative data were collected using the researcher-developed cultural knowledge preintervention and postintervention assessment and …

Fairness: Examining Support And Resources Available To Respondents In Title Ix Cases, Emanuel Jerome Oliver

Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study explored how higher education institutions develop Title IX procedures to ensure respondents receive fair treatment from the outset of the adjudication process. It also examined how colleges and universities provide resources and support to respondents throughout the Title IX process. The study used semi structured interviews with Title IX Coordinators at various higher education institutions to understand how they have developed practices to support respondents.

Findings revealed that higher education institutions have developed various methods to support respondents in the Title IX process. The goal of the Title IX process is to ensure that respondents receive the …

Capacitación Docente Para Generación De Entorno De Aprendizaje En Alumnos De Preescolar, Thamara Pérez Barreto

Theses and Dissertations

El propósito de este estudio es establecer la correlación si es que existe, entre la capacitación sobre la organización del aula preescolar y el conocimiento del docente antes y después de ser capacitados. Para ello, se utilizó una pre prueba antes de la capacitación y una posprueba después de participar en el proceso formativo. La investigación utilizó un diseño no experimental con enfoque cuantitativo de naturaleza correlacional. La muestra estuvo compuesta de 20 docentes de un Programa Head Start ubicado en la zona noroeste de Puerto Rico. Los participantes cuentan con alguna certificación para ejercer a nivel preescolar.

La investigadora …

Cisheterosexism In Lgbtqia+ Health Resource Guides, Vanessa Kitzie, Olivia Reed, Amirezza Kalantari

Faculty Publications

Cisheterosexism in LGBTQIA+ Health Resource Guides Vanessa Kitzie, Amirezza Kalantari, Olivia Reed University of South Carolina, School of Information Science [email protected] Limited healthcare resources lead many LGBTQIA+ people to peer networks, often accessed via search engines to find community-created health resource websites [1–3]. Academic library guides benefit privileged LGBTQIA+ identities [4], but little is known about community guides, which may reinforce cisheterosexist narratives, causing stigma and stress [5, 6]. This study addresses this gap by scraping Google results for LGBTQIA+ health resources across US states, examining how cisheterosexism shapes health topics, geography, and representation of LGBTQIA+ populations. We hypothesize that …

Amalie Joachim: Reminiscences Of Childhood, Robert W. Eshbach

Faculty Publications

This bilingual edition presents Reminiscences of Childhood, the autobiographical narrative of the Austrian operatic singer Amalie Joachim (née Schneeweiss), in Nina Joachim’s English translation together with the original German text. Written for her daughters, the memoir recounts Joachim’s family background in Carinthia and Styria; her early musical training and exposure to domestic chamber music; the political and personal upheavals of the revolutions of 1848; the death of her father and the family’s subsequent poverty; and her first theatrical engagements in Troppau and Hermannstadt. The narrative offers a vivid first-person account of musical life, female artistic formation, family survival, provincial theatre, …

From Meaning To Memory: Assessing The Capacity And Representational Structure Of Visual Working Memory With Meaningful Stimuli, Yong Hoon Chung

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Visual working memory is thought to be strictly limited. Yet we remember meaningful, real-world objects better than abstract stimuli. Here I show that this advantage arises from the semantic structure of meaningful objects, not their perceptual features alone, and that it extends even to memory for associated features such as color. In the brain, meaningful objects elicit greater and more distributed delay activity, consistent with the recruitment of higher-level neural processes during maintenance. I propose that semantic knowledge adds representational dimensions that make items more distinctive, and that these dimensions are organized hierarchically with lower-level visual features. These findings recast …

Data Repository For: Dorsey Et Al., 'Rapid Transient Uplift Driven By Active Slab Tear, Southern Calabria, Italy', Rebecca J. Dorsey, Nathan D. Brown, Sergio G. Longhitano, Marco Meschis, Domenico Chiarella, Charles P. Ogle

Earth & Environmental Sciences Datasets

Southern Italy preserves a well-studied record of deformation and uplift related to migrating oblique collision, trench retreat, and tearing of subducted ocean slabs. However, the surface expression of these processes is incompletely understood due to a lack of reliable ages for marine terraces >200 m above sea level (masl). Here we use luminescence methods to date shallow marine sands from terraces ~ 100 to 1,000 masl in southern Calabria and interpolate the results with regional surface mapping. Burial ages overlap across the full range of sampled elevations with a weighted mean of 118.8 ± 8.7 thousand years before present (ka). …

We’Re The Aunties Now: Intersections Of Mourning Practices, Intergenerational Trauma, And Matrilineal Responsibility In Oneida Life, Marena Bridges

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation examines how Oneida and broader Haudenosaunee mourning practices, as I have lived and understood them, shape grief, healing, and matrilineal responsibility in my family. Using Indigenous autoethnography and storywork, I first present a crafted narrative, then return to that narrative through reflexive thematic analysis. The analysis identifies patterned meanings in how grief is structured, shared, and carried across closely stacked deaths in the maternal line. Mourning practices function as community infrastructure that organizes time, redistributes labor, transmits knowledge, and sustains continuing bonds with the dead. At the same time, repeated loss produces a form of matriarchal ascension, concentrating …

Navigating An Uncharted Path: Chief Diversity Officer Challenges In Creating And Implementing A Dei Strategy Plan Within Major Hospital Systems, Diane Shines Mcdaniel

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This qualitative phenomenological study investigated the major challenges Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) face when creating and implementing DEI strategy plans within major hospital systems in the United States. The study was guided by one research question: What are the major challenges that Chief Diversity Officers face in creating and implementing a DEI strategy plan within major U.S. hospital systems? A phenomenological design was used to examine the challenges of six Chief Diversity Officers serving in major U.S. hospitals as they led DEI strategy planning and implementation. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews consisting of eight open-ended questions designed to elicit …

Predicting Dementia Risk: Progress, Pitfalls, And Priorities, Patricia Nistor, Osvaldo Espin-Garcia, Zul Merali, Shehzad Ali

Brain and Mind Institute

As populations age, identifying individuals at high risk for dementia has become a cornerstone of prevention-oriented public health policy. Accurate and scalable risk stratification could enable early intervention and resource targeting. However, existing models face methodological limitations, including constraints in available data and follow-up duration, challenges in dementia ascertainment, heterogeneity in modelling approaches, and limited external validation. This commentary discusses these challenges and identifies methodological priorities for developing dementia risk algorithms that are robust and suitable for real-world implementation.

Interpersonal Reckoning: The Liminal Space Between Rupture And Repair In Counselor Education, Phoenix E. Rosewood

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand and explore the phenomenon of the rupture, reckoning, and when possible, the repair process with racial, ethnic, and cultural (REC) microaggressions in counselor education. Participants (n = 14) included counselor educators who had either enacted a REC microaggression and attempted repair, or had been the recipient of an REC rupture and a meaningful attempt at repair. This study utilized a thematic analysis as a methodological framework in interpreting the data with the perspective of borderlands theory, critical embodied phenomenology, relational cultural theory and relational neuroscience analytical frameworks to account for and explain …

A Qualitative Study Of Existential Paralysis As A Pathway To Meaning And Purpose Among Generation Z, Oksana V. Panchenko

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study examines the lived experiences of emerging adults from Generation Z (N = 26) with a qualitative reflexive thematic analysis. Data was collected with an online survey and open ended prompts. Twelve themes were identified as part of data analysis: (1) Feeling Lost, Immobilized, Isolated and Overthinking, (2) Feeling Depressed and Experiencing Identity Erosion and Functional Disruption, (3) Anxiety, the Struggle for Authentic Connection, and Fear About the Future, (4) Social Media, Comparison, and Fear of Missing Out, (5) Cultural and Sociopolitical Pressures on Self-Expression, (6) Ambiguous Loss and Disconnection in Social Presence, (7) Social Skills, Self-Confidence, and Adaptation …

Equity Is Rural, Too: Critical Exploration Of Educational Equity In Predominantly White Communities, Lydia Cochrane

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Education reform has fallen short of providing a truly equitable education for all students. Schools will continue to fail their students with marginalized identities if they do not interrogate existing power dynamics.  This study examines how educators in predominantly White rural communities define and recognize educational equity, focusing on understanding the unique factors of rural life that shape these perceptions. Despite a history of low achievement and systemic inequities in both urban and rural school systems, rural communities, often overlooked in educational research, remain underexplored in discussions about equity. Existing literature frames inequities primarily through an urban lens, reinforcing misconceptions …

It’S Not In The Book! Discovering Diverse Social Experiences Through Simulation, Thomas A. Lucey, Jeffrey Hawkins

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Simulation represents an instructional strategy that offers much potential to engage students in social studies learning experiences that provide rich meanings. While they have similarities to role-plays and games, simulations have four distinguishing characteristics. Simulation offers students an intellectual journey that motivates them to explore alternative ways of viewing social relationships that build from taken-for-granted principles. For many topics, what better way is there to learn about something than to experience or live it? Asking, “What did they do?” “What were some of their options?” rather than “What would you do if you were this person?” invites learners on their …

Connected Fair Detachments Of Hypergraphs I, Amin Bahmanian

Faculty Publications – Mathematics

Let G be a hypergraph whose edges are colored. An (α, n)-detachment of G is a hypergraph obtained by splitting a vertex α into n vertices, say α1, . . . , αn , and sharing the incident edges among the subvertices. A detachment is fair if the degree of vertices and multiplicity of edges are shared as evenly as possible among the subvertices within the whole hypergraph as well as within each color class. In this paper we solve an open problem from the 1970s by finding necessary and sufficient conditions under which a k-edge-colored hypergraph …

Evolving Paradigms Of Sustainability In Luxury Fashion: Evidence From An Emerging Market, Sandipan Sen, Sphurti Sewak, Swati Singh, Moutusy Maity, Aniruddha Pangarkar

Faculty Publications – Marketing

The global fashion industry is both an economic driver and a major contributor of environmental and social challenges. This research examines how sustainable luxury fashion is constructed and adopted within an emerging market context by integrating perspectives from entrepreneurs, industry managers, and consumers. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach and drawing upon Self-Identity Theory and need for uniqueness, this research explores how identity-based motivations shape sustainable luxury consumption. Study 1 employs in-depth interviews with luxury fashion entrepreneurs and practitioners to uncover how sustainability is embedded within luxury value propositions. Building on these insights, Study 2 quantitatively tests a conceptual model examining the …

A Systems Analysis Of Long-Term Community Recovery Following The 2023 Lāhainā Wildfire: Understanding Recovery As A Complex Adaptive Social-Ecological System, Christy Shaver

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

No abstract provided.

Mental Health Therapists’ Experiences Of Moral Injury, Mary Krome

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Moral injury refers to the psychological, social, behavioral, and spiritual consequences that may result from experiences involving perceived violations of deeply held moral values and beliefs. Although research on moral injury has expanded beyond military populations, limited attention has been given to the experiences of mental health therapists, and qualitative investigations of this phenomenon remain scarce. Therefore, this project provides a qualitative assessment of mental health therapists’ lived experiences of moral injury, using an ecosystemic approach and accounting for biopsychosocial factors that influence experiences of moral injury. Six mental health therapists completed the Moral Injury and Distress Scale and endorsed …

Doctoral Trainees’ Experiences Of Vicarious Trauma Within Inpatient Settings: An Exploratory Study, Melissa Neitlich

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Vicarious trauma (VT), first coined by Irene Lisa McCann and Anne Pearlman, is described as a pervasive and cumulative impact of working with survivors of trauma, resulting in changes to the therapist’s identity, worldview, psychological needs, beliefs, and memory. In spite of the unique vulnerabilities of doctoral trainees for experiencing VT, there is limited research on the impact of VT among doctoral trainee populations, as most of the extant literature focuses on the impact of VT in middle- to late-career psychological practice. In this primarily qualitative dissertation, I examined trainees’ experiences of vicarious trauma within various inpatient settings using the …

Boys Will Be Empathetic: How Does Media Literacy Education Impact Adolescent Boys’ Empathy?, Karley A. Betzler

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many adolescent boys are using social media each day for a variety of reasons. How social media is being utilized by these students, what they are being potentially exposed to online, and how it is impacting their offline lives has raised questions and concerns for many educators. This literature review explores how teaching media literacy skills to adolescent boy students impacts their empathy. This review specifically focuses on research done around the impact of social media use on the development of empathy and masculinity, how the impacts of boys’ exposure to the manosphere are being felt and perpetuated in schools, …

Comparing Digital And Non-Digital Gamification On Their Impacts In The World Language Classroom, Amanda K. Salmonson

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Few studies have focused on the comparison between digital and non-digital game-based learning, especially in the world language classroom. This thesis is a literature review of 36 peer-reviewed articles to compare the effects of digital versus non-digital game use in regards to motivation, language acquisition, vocabulary retention, teacher implementation, and student social skills and mental health. The findings show that both styles of gamification have positive impacts in all of these categories when compared to traditional teacher-centered instruction, though when compared, each mode has its benefits and weaknesses. Digital games’ promotion of competition can limit student intrinsic motivation as well …

How Does Recreational Screen Time Affect Student Academic Performance, Trever Nordlund

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This literature review examined how recreational screen time affects academic performance among students. Drawing on research addressing cognitive effects, motivation, cognitive exhaustion, persistence, technology habits, and pedagogical interventions, the review found that recreational screen time is reliably associated with modest negative effects on academic performance rather than severe ones. Digital interruptions carry a measurable cognitive cost that persists beyond the interruption itself, though the size of that cost varies by student. Self-regulation and the relevance of competing content emerged as the strongest explanatory factors. Neither restriction-based policies nor self-regulation interventions fully resolved the problem on their own. Implications for professional …

Engaging Exceptional Learners: Applied Learning Frameworks As A Foundation For Autonomy In Secondary Special Education, Lisa Chovan-Spence

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Students with mild disabilities are transitioning from high school into the world of work inadequately prepared, even after completing the required transition measures laid out in their Individual Education Programs (IEPs). The transition gap could be remedied by increasing experiential learning opportunities within the core curriculum. Foundational educational psychology and cognitive science validate the use of experiential teaching pedagogies. However, less is written about the use of experiential learning methods in special education and their ability to better prepare students with disabilities (SWD) for this transition. The benefits of experiential learning teaching strategies, such as their propensity to build students' …

Building A Digital Altar For The Justice-Centered Torch-Bearers: The Role Of Digital Networks In Supporting Contemporary Racial Justice Activists Through Contemplative Practices, Renée L. Bradford

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This mixed-methods study aimed to identify factors critical in building a digital support network employing contemplative practices to support activists engaging in racial justice work in the United States. The research question that guided this study was: What factors do racial justice activists regard as critical in building a digital support network employing contemplative practices? The study’s importance lies in addressing the evolving landscape of digital activism while honoring the spiritual and relational foundations that have historically sustained social justice movements, particularly as contemporary activists navigate new technological tools while seeking to maintain authentic connection and contemplative grounding. Key findings …

Integración De La Inteligencia Artificial Generativa En La Enseñanza Secundaria En Prácticas Docentes En Escuelas Públicas Chárter Del Estado De La Florida, Axel R. Casillas

Theses and Dissertations

Esta disertación cualitativa de estudio de casos múltiples analizó cómo docentes de educación secundaria en escuelas públicas chárter de Florida interpretan los desafíos, beneficios y dilemas éticos asociados al uso de la inteligencia artificial generativa (IAG) en su práctica pedagógica. El fundamento teórico integró la Alfabetización Digital Crítica de Hinrichsen y Coombs, la Teoría de Agencia Docente, el Modelo de Aceptación Tecnológica y el marco TPACK, abordando de manera coetánea la integración instrumental, ética y pedagógica de la tecnología.

 Los hallazgos revelaron que los educadores adoptaron la IAG, primordialmente, para optimizar la eficiencia operativa, mitigar la carga burocrática y facilitar …

Table Of Contents, Cardozo Journal Of Equal Rights & Social Justice, Vol. 32, Iss. 2

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

How To Stop Mass Shootings Without Violating The Second Amendment: Designing Regulations To Prevent Acts Of Mass Violence That Pass The 6:3 History And Tradition Test, Robert D'Alessandro

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article proposes that states can constitutionally implement ammunition possession limits to reduce mass violence by aligning such laws with the "history and tradition" test established by the current Supreme Court. It argues that modern caps on ammunition are analogous to early American gunpowder restrictions, which were enacted for public safety to prevent catastrophic explosions in populated areas.

Justice In Erotic Spaces, Elena L. Cohen

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

This Article posits that the concept of "erotic justice" could be used by courts to push back against the current cascade of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and meaningfully improve the lives ofgay and trans people. The beginning of the twenty-first century was widely seen as a time of great progress for LGBTQ+ people, with the legalization of gay marriage in countries across the world seen as the ultimate triumph. Yet there is a strong contemporary movement to re-criminalize the lives of LGBTQ+ people and to remove protections that have been granted by courts. In the U.S., the 2020s have seen an ongoing …

Data Sanctuaries: Rethinking Technological Progress To Preserve Federalism, Nathan S. Lee

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

Why are sanctuary states and cities in the present moment largely failing to protect immigrants and other vulnerable people from federal enforcement of an agenda based on mass deportation and fear? While federalism was painted during the Civil Rights Era as a weapon of states to protect policies of discrimination and segregation, federalism was also a powerful tool used by Northern States before the Civil War to resist Southern and federal laws enabling the dehumanizing capture and transport offugitive slaves (or suspected fugitive slaves). What has changed in the passing years to make federalism seem like such a thin concept, …