Digital Commons Network^™

We Need New Books, Liz Thackeray Nelson, Mandy Luszeck

The Utah English Journal

It’s College Day for incoming freshmen, and several English Department faculty and prospective students gather together for lunch to discuss English Department culture, tips for student success, and any other questions students have. Partway through, one freshman student asks what our favorite classical works are. My mind draws a blank, and I (Mandy) keep my mouth shut. It has been years since I have engaged in classic works. Or picked one up for that matter. I know the handful I taught in high school fairly well—To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby (so much Gatsby), The Crucible. …

Book Review: Big Jim And The White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined, Michael Handy

The Utah English Journal

Upon first opening this beautiful book, I regretted that my district may never approve it for my classroom. Policy in my school district prohibits classroom use of texts that use racial slurs. An initial author’s note uses a specific racial slur numerous times, repeating it throughout the book—always stricken when a character says it, but still appearing in scenery. This is a shame, because Big Jim and the White Boy is magnificent.

Teachers Teaching Teachers: Sharing The Genius Already In Our Classrooms, Joseph Wierderhold, Whitney Lindsey Sorensen

The Utah English Journal

The purpose of this article is to share two simple—but revolutionary—truths that have shaped us and our classrooms:

1. Teachers who write make better writing teachers (and happier people)

2. Teachers make the best teachers of other teachers (that means you)

One Family Under Kim:, Jared Johnson

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K. or the state), as one of the most isolated and controlled states in Asia, has since its founding attempted to shape the culture and ideology surrounding the family construct to support the rule of the socialist regime and its leaders, the Eternal President, Kim Il Sung, and his successors. In Korea, like the rest of East Asia, the traditional family unit has been a central societal structure for centuries. Largely based upon Confucianism, the nuclear family—referring generally to the biological family unit of parents and children—has determined not only the lifestyle and livelihood …

Mystics, Oracles, And Bones: Spiritual Resistance For Justice, Healing, And Resolution, Leah Hollis

Comparative Civilizations Review

This conceptual essay examines the enduring human impulse to seek meaning, justice, and healing through mystical traditions in response to suffering and harm. When traditional solutions through grievance, the law, or mediation fails, some individuals may turn to spiritual practices not as superstition, but as embodied strategies of survival, reclamation, and clarity. Comparing diverse traditions from a variety of cultures, including oracle bone divination in ancient China, the Oracle at Delphi in Greece, West African Ifá, Benin’s Voudou, diasporic Hoodoo, Celtic Druidic law, and Sufi mysticism, this paper explores how mystics have long served as interpreters of suffering and perceived …

2026 Merc Annual Report, David Naff

MERC Publications

This is the annual report of the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) at Virginia Commonwealth University for the 2025-2026 academic year. It includes vignettes depicting MERC activities in the past year that align with each of its five principles: research, relevance, rigor, multiple perspectives, and impact. It concludes with a discussion of MERC's commitment moving forward.

Ai Policy In Virginia Public Schools: A Comparative Analysis, Jesse Senechal, Jamelle Simmons, Jonathan D. Becker, Melissa Ware, Michael Broda, Kindy Anderson, Eric Byers, Kiana Bradford, Thea Racelis, Meleah Ellison

MERC Publications

This MERC research and policy review explores policy implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in Virginia public schools. It is part of a two part series with a companion report focused on AI implications for PK-12 teaching and learning. The report has two parts:

1. A review of the AI policy landscape around PK-12 education
2. Virginia AI policy analysis

It concludes with a series of key takeaways and recommendations for PK-12 policy and practice.

The Idea Of Air, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson

Publications

How we view air, especially clean air, has meaningful normative and practical implications. Today, it is commonly recognized as an exhaustible natural resource. But air was not always thought of as something to be conserved, developed, and used. This Article is the first to explore and interrogate that view.

The shift to seeing air as a resource started in the first part of the twentieth century. Previously, air was characterized by its limitless supply of oxygen: a pure public good. Over time, the quality of that good changed, and a precious resource emerged. That resource—especially its chemical and physical characteristics—inspired …

How To Use Court Websites Like A Law Librarian: Tools And Tactics For Using Colorado's Court Websites For Legal Research, Annakatherine Wherren

Publications

No abstract provided.

Finite Ventures, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

The law endows corporations and other business organizations with the awesome power of perpetual life—unless the charter expressly provides for a certain duration, such as ten years. But does anyone ever actually choose limited life? Why would they?

This article reveals that limited-life business entities—finite ventures—play a significant and underappreciated role in modern commerce. Private equity and venture capital funds, SPACs, and insurance syndicates are all organized with a limited lifespan.

Their motivation? This article claims that limited life is a valuable, but often overlooked, tool for ameliorating agency costs: the managers of a finite venture know they must produce …

Gender Therapy False Equivalency, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

One critical dispute surrounding the rights of LGBTQ people and societal recognition of their existence is the legal debate regarding very different types of gender therapy. On the one hand, several states have banned the provision of gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth, positing that it is a dangerous form of mutilation. A separate set of states has banned the practice of so-called gay or gender conversion therapy that seeks to transform youth away from their queer identities, concluding that it is a form of abuse. Both sets of laws have been challenged in courts with the Supreme Court recently …

Moody V. Netchoice And Telecom Law's First Amendment, Blake Reid

Publications

No abstract provided.

Separation Of Copyright Powers, Blake Reid

Publications

The United States Copyright Office’s multifarious roles in the U.S. copyright system have long prompted uncertainty about its position among the branches of the federal government. From its formal home in the Library of Congress, the chameleonic Office has accumulated a wide range of advisory, rulemaking, adjudicative, and administrative functions that have long prompted questions about both agencies’ exercise of dueling legislative and executive powers.

Despite its increasingly sprawling portfolio and unusual configuration, the Office has never faced a serious separation-of-powers reckoning—until now. In the span of just five days in May 2025, Donald Trump fired the Librarian of Congress …

The Internet And The Lost Law Of Transit, Vivek Krishnamurthy

Publications

For centuries, the law of transit has specified when states must permit foreign persons and goods to traverse their territory on journeys beginning and ending beyond their borders. Transit is a right — not a privilege — that tempers territorial sovereignty. Though largely forgotten today, the right to transit springs from states’ responsibilities to the international community when their territory hosts infrastructure of global utility.

Yet the internet stands as a striking exception to this tradition. Despite its importance, no doctrine of transit constrains states’ power to block or disrupt internet traffic that merely passes through their territory. This is …

Jawbreaking And Counterboning, Blake Reid

Publications

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s public campaign of unlawful threats against television broadcasters, culminating in the high-profile preemption and later return to air of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, provides an important natural experiment for the law of jawboning. The Kimmel-Carr episode highlights the challenges of legal remedies against government officials over even the most flagrantly coercive, unlawful, and public jawbones. It also highlights the importance of intermediaries refusing to comply with unlawful demands—what this Essay calls jawbreaking.

Using the Kimmel-Carr episode as a case study, this Essay proposes moving beyond voluntary incentives for jawbreaking to impose a mandatory duty to jawbreak …

Against A Medical Exception To Equal Protection, Govind Persad

Publications

Government regulations of medicine sometimes treat patients differently based on their race or sex. Does heightened scrutiny apply to such regulations—as is usual when law treats someone differently based on a protected characteristic? Or is there a medical exception to equal protection?

Recently, in United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court upheld a law that restricted access to medical treatments for transgender minors. Though its holding did not rely on medical exceptionalism, its discussion reinvigorated interest in a "medical exception" to equal protection: that medical decisions are exempt from the searching review applied when governmental decisions consider protected characteristics.

For …

Advocacy Matters, Richard B. Collins

Publications

The Supreme Court’s 2022 Castro-Huerta decision was wrong on the points it discussed. It was doubly wrong for a reason it ignored. But the latter error was shared because all briefs and the dissenting opinion ignored it as well. The question presented was whether a nineteenth-century federal Indian country statute provided for exclusive federal jurisdiction over interracial crimes, or for concurrent authority with states. The Court held that the statute allowed concurrent jurisdiction. But it ignored the fact that Congress and the Court, until fairly recently, avoided concurrent federal-state jurisdiction over crimes. Had the self-styled originalist Justices taken their theory …

Open Source Ai, Open Liability Ai, Bryan H. Choi

Publications

The release of open-source AI foundation models has been advertised as “good for the world.” But free public access comes with significant risks of harm. The tacit assumption has been that the “open source” label carries with it automatic immunity from legal liability. Accordingly, critics and skeptics of open-source AI have focused their attacks primarily on whether open-source AI properly qualifies as “open source.”

But the rule of liability for open-source AI should not depend on openness. This Essay explains that the notion of open-source exceptionalism draws upon a discredited theory of charitable immunity. Conventional tort law principles do not …

Adversarial Certification Of Evidentiary Software, Nicholas G. Vincent, Bryan H. Choi, Eli Siems, Clay Halbert, Katherine J. Strandburg

Publications

No abstract provided.

State Constitutionalism's Fragile Wall, Adam B. Sopko

Publications

The adequate and independent state grounds (AISG) doctrine has long demarcated the perimeter of the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority to review state court decisions, limiting review to questions of federal law. AISG maintains the Court’s primacy over federal law and state courts’ supremacy over state law. A comprehensive review of all filings on the Court’s docket from state courts over the last twenty years reveals that recent applications of AISG consist of subtle but significant departures from existing norms that, together, suggest a reformulation of the Court’s power over state courts that threatens their sovereign law development role. This Essay …

Sustaining High-Quality Service-Learning In Research Intensive Universities: A Qualitative Study Of Instructor Perspectives, Marika Koch

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

In a world that often feels disconnected due to our sociopolitical climate, there is a need to create socially aware and civically engaged adults. Service-learning integrated into higher education courses can do that and more. Research indicates that both students and the community benefit significantly when students participate in effective service-learning classes. Students who take service-learning courses in college tend to exhibit higher academic achievement, enhanced social and emotional skills, and greater long-term civic engagement. Effective service-learning courses share three common elements: they foster a strong connection to course objectives, promote reciprocity for all involved, and encourage active student reflection. …

Bridging The Gap: How Sociodemographic Factors Shape Adults’ Decisions To Pursue Hearing Aids, Logan Lorié

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Despite hearing aids becoming more accessible to adults with hearing loss, hearing aid uptake rates remain low, partly due to sociodemographic factors that influence an adults’ decision to pursue amplification. This study systematically reviewed research on how sociodemographic factors – to include age, gender, socioeconomic status, education level, race/ethnicity, and military status – contribute to the decision-making process. This review guided an analysis of these variables using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a large public health database. To ensure enough hearing aid users were included in the analysis, NHANES data were combined across survey cycles from 1999 …

Cultivating Seeds Of Virtue:, Sarai Brown

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Human beings have long been concerned with the question of human nature. Countless media—both academic and creative— have devoted much time to the pursuit of whether humans, at their very basic core, have inherently good or evil natures. While many in the Western world are familiar with the debates between the likes of Hobbes and Rousseau, this topic has also been a major theme of Chinese philosophy. Of the two choices between good and evil, which is the natural inclination of humanity and which is a deliberate deviation from our original position? This is the approximate question that Chinese philosophers …

Effect Of Inter Electrode Distance On Electrochemical Mineralization Of Calcium Carbonate In Mildly Acidic Environments, Irene Walker, Ivy Wu, Steven Decaluwe, Robert Bell, Kerry Rippy

Reviews, Analyses, and Instructional Studies in Electrochemistry (RAISE)

The effect of inter electrode distance (IED) on electrochemical mineralization in a parallel plate cell with a stainless-steel working electrode is presented. Three IEDs were tested, 6.5 mm, 15.5 mm, and 22.0 mm, for their water reduction effectiveness to create a region of local alkalinity that stimulates calcium carbonate precipitation in mildly acidic conditions. Chronoamperometry at -1.6 V for 30 minutes with ex-situ optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used. At the smallest IEDs, crystal clusters formed in growth-favored regimes as compared to the largest IED, where nucleation dominated, leading to encasement of the SS mesh. Rapid precipitation …

Motherhood In K-Drama:, Rebecca Dewitt

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Memory is a funny thing. We look back on the past experiences in our lives and some appear crystal clear to us, others murky. The truth is, every memory is warped by time and shifting perspective, and it is rare that our memories are truly and entirely accurate to the actual events that occurred. The same can be said with history and peoples—–the collective memory of a group works much in the same way as the memory of the individual. Past events and experiences are somewhat warped through current ideas, emotions, and experiences. This is not wrong per se, it …

Preservice Teachers' Visions And Understandings Of Classroom Documentation And Displays Of Children's Work In Elementary Schools, Angela Eckhoff

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

At present, research exploring educator’s understandings of displays of student work is scant yet such displays are regularly exhibited within the community spaces of early learning and elementary schools. These displays communicate messages to those within the space about teacher and student agency, curricular priorities, children and their work, and the relationship between teaching and learning. Grounded in a framework of documentality and teacher vision, this paper explores the ways in which preservice teachers (PSTs) understand teacher-cultivated, student work documentation. This research used a Photo-Elicitation Interview methodology to develop a descriptive account of PSTs' visions and understandings of teacher-cultivated, classroom …

Methodological Insights And Trends: Participatory Positioning Of Children And Youth In Visual Art Education Research, Angela Eckhoff

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Participatory research methods have a focus on facilitating research processes that engage with participants and, as such, aim to promote individual voice, facilitate richer reflection and dialogue, and enable the articulation of participants' unique experiences. To explore the degree to which participatory practices are enacted in visual art education research, the present study critically examines the agentic positioning of children and youth in school‐based, visual arts experiences through a systematic, methodological literature review. Findings from this review serve to ground proposed recommendations for the inclusion of supportive research practices that carefully attend to the unique considerations that arise during participatory …

Integrating Design Thinking In A Stem Methods Course, Demetrice Smith-Mutegi

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Design thinking, a problem-solving approach, has been offered as a strategy to address the challenges of growing and complex teaching expectations. In this narrative, I describe an adapted model of design thinking that was implemented in a secondary STEM methods course for teacher candidates in a graduate program. A description of the key activities, including the fundamental role of empathizing, is shared. Design thinking, when implemented by teachers and teacher candidates, allows the teacher to design and improve a lesson or unit based on student feedback and engagement. This is especially important in today's rapidly evolving educational landscape, where educators …

Participatory Approaches To Understanding Collaborative, Child-Initiated Play: Children's Agency, Social Negotiation, And Identity Construction On The Playground, Angela Eckhoff

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Children's play in schools is often tightly controlled, shaped by adult beliefs and concerns about safety and appropriateness. Play in school settings can reflect expected school norms and follow rules set by adults, but free play also allows for rough, risky, mischievous, and subversive actions. This research, guided by an affordance framework, examines spontaneous, child-initiated outdoor free play to understand how children navigate and reinterpret the boundaries of play. Using critical naturalistic inquiry and participatory methods, the study data includes children's videography that captures dynamic interactions and shifts in agency among peers, go along interviews that track boundary negotiations in …

(Re)Making Our Own Monsters: Critical Posthumanism And Youth Activism In The Wild Ones, Judith Dunkerly-Boulanger

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This study examines the graphic novel The Wild Ones through a critical posthumanist lens and multimodal content analysis (MMCA) to explore its portrayal of youth activism, cultural diversity, and interconnectedness. The story follows four children who summon monsters from their cultural folklore to resist capitalist developers’ demolition of their apartment building. The analysis identifies three key themes: wildness as a source of constructive power, the challenge to anthropocentric narratives, and intersectional youth empowerment. The book subverts traditional hierarchies by blending human and nonhuman agency and emphasizing relational networks among humans, nonhumans, and the environment. The monsters serve as symbols of …