Digital Commons Network^™

A Movement In Process: The Effects Of Post-Dictatorship Politics On The Legalization Of Abortion In Argentina, Corinne J. Robbins

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

Access to abortion is an inherently critical aspect of sexual and reproductive rights. That is to say that access to safe abortions is of equal importance to guaranteeing a person’s right to safety during the pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum period. This research primarily focuses on the trajectory of the legalization of abortion in Argentina after the end of the last military Dictatorship (1976-1983), the factors that impacted the movement, and how the movement is received in Argentina today. Argentina’s current administration has been unsupportive of the current abortion law, but past successes demonstrate that abortion rights activists in Argentina are …

Globalization Of The Japanese Startup Ecosystem Through Transnational Entrepreneurship, Wonkyung Lee

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

In 2022, Former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled a “new form of capitalism,” aimed at boosting investment in startups. When people think of major Japanese firms, they often envision corporations like Honda and Sony. However, Kishida highlights that these giants were once startups founded by young entrepreneurs, and emphasized the necessity of cultivating such innovation in Japan today. Furthermore, the introduction of a startup visa in 2015 has made it easier for transnational entrepreneurs to establish businesses in Japan. However, there are significant key issues within the Japanese startup ecosystem that make it difficult for foreign entrepreneurs to launch …

Walking In Town: A Study Of Walkability And Its Impacts On Students At Eku, Emma Garland

Honors Theses

This project explores the current state of walkability in Richmond, Kentucky, with a specific focus on connectivity between Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) and essential services in the surrounding community. Utilizing the PRECEDE-PROCEED model as a planning framework, the study combines secondary demographic health data as well as

primary data collection—including student surveys and a walkability audit using a modified Delaware Walkability Assessment Tool—to assess pedestrian infrastructure, access to amenities, and safety concerns. Findings reveal a lack of continuous, safe, and accessible walking routes, limiting physical activity and contributing to broader health disparities. Based on these findings, two primary evidence-based interventions …

Southern Adventist University Commencement Program Spring 2025, Southern Adventist University

Commencement Programs

Program for Southern Adventist University Spring 2025 graduation. The commencement service took place on May 1, 2025 at 9 am and 1 pm in Iles Physical Education Center.

Navigating Transparency In The Digital Age: An In-Depth Study Of Disclosure Practices In Influencer Marketing On Social Media., Devan Klarisa Grey

Dissertations - ALL

This study examines the disclosure practices of nano and micro-influencers on TikTok, focusing on their adherence to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines and the impact on transparency in sponsored messaging and regulatory enforcement. With the increasing use of influencer marketing, sponsored content with disclosures has become a critical issue. Regulatory bodies emphasize the need for clear and concise disclosures, yet influencers' compliance varies despite existing guidelines. This inconsistency raises concerns about consumer deception and ethical issues within digital marketing. This research examines influencers' disclosure practices on TikTok through a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The quantitative analysis …

Evidence Of The Evolution Of Interdisciplinarity: A Study Of Boundary Objects In Information Science, Susan Berrigan Corieri

Dissertations - ALL

This research investigates interdisciplinarity within the field of information science through the lens of boundary objects, addressing the primary research question: How does an examination of academic boundary objects provide evidence of the evolution of interdisciplinarity? By analyzing four boundary objects, (1) a peer-reviewed journal, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIS&T) (2) an academic conference, the iConference, (3) university organizational structures of U.S. iSchools, and (4) the nomenclature used to refer to U.S. iSchool academic units, the study explores how these artifacts document the collaboration and evolution of academic communities in information science. Motivated by the …

The Importance Of National Government Participation In Local Smart Cities Planning, Majid Alshehry

Dissertations - ALL

The arrival of the smart city paradigm represents a significant shift in urban planning, integrating technology and data analytics to enhance urban environments' livability, workability, and sustainability. This thesis explores the critical role that national and local governments play in planning and executing smart city initiatives across a nation state, examining the impacts of policy in such technologically advanced urban spaces. With a multiple case study research design and the use of secondary data it seeks to understand how important national policies are in supporting and influencing the endeavors of local governments in deploying smart city solutions that cater to …

“Because I Felt Like We Weren't Chained Down Anymore”: The Experiences Of Families Of Students With Intellectual Disability Who Revoke Consent For Special Education Services, Sara Jo Soldovieri

Dissertations - ALL

“Because I Felt Like We Weren’t Chained Down Anymore” investigates a rarely discussed yet profoundly consequential choice: families of students with intellectual disability who revoke consent for special education services. Drawing upon Disability Studies in Education (DSE), Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory (DisCrit), and Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS), this dissertation situates revocation of consent within a larger struggle against entrenched ableism, racism, and segregation in American schools. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, I explore the lived experiences of five families who navigated and resist the special education system, clashed with segregated placements, and ultimately decided their children would be better …

Machine Learning Course: A 15-Week Interactive Curriculum With Code And Case Studies, Pegah Khosravi

Open Educational Resources

This open-access machine learning course is a comprehensive 15-week curriculum developed and published on GitHub with full Google Colab compatibility. It combines theoretical concepts with hands-on Python coding, real-world datasets, and structured projects covering regression, classification, clustering, deep learning, transformers, and multimodal AI. The course is designed for students, educators, and researchers interested in applied machine learning, including biomedical applications. It includes explainable AI components and ethical discussions to align with modern AI standards. The course is maintained by BioMind AI Lab at CUNY.

The Rainbow Nation Goes Dark: Unjust Energy Production And Load Shedding In South Africa, Grace E. Yearwood

Student Theses 2015-Present

Numerous inequalities experienced by South Africans right now are a result of the country’s previous apartheid government. One example is South Africa’s current energy distribution, which is extremely inequitable across communities due to the structurally failing energy grid and corruption within the government. Energy distribution in South Africa encapsulates the practice of load shedding, which is essentially controlled rolling electrical blackouts. Chapter One examines quantitative data regarding energy production and distribution in South Africa, including the details of load shedding. Moreover, this chapter explores the negative relationship between energy production, load shedding, and ecosystem services. The quantitative data lays the …

Climate Change Behind Prison Walls: Environmental Justice, Prison Abolition, And Social Welfare, Mia Moody

Student Theses 2015-Present

Unbeknownst to many, human rights violations occur on a large scale behind prison walls. This paper examines some of these violations, especially those exacerbated by climate change, through an environmental lense in order to emphasize the need for social welfare-based solutions in the abolition of the prison industrial complex. It also seeks to illustrate the connection between the environmental justice movement and the prison abolition movement so that marginalized peoples may be free from shouldering disproportionate effects of environmental hazards and imprisonment. This paper is introduced with a brief overview of the human rights violations occurring in prisons. Using quantitative …

Investigating Cross-Modal Temporal Dynamics And Semantic Incongruency In Multisensory Integration, Xiaoxiao Chen

Theses - ALL

Multisensory integration is a pervasive phenomenon in daily life, where our senses (commonly visual and auditory) demonstrate a high degree of interdependence in information processing. This integration is often regarded as automatic and pre-attentional. The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential (ERP) component that captures the difference between novel stimuli (deviant, unexpected trials with low frequency) and regularly occurring stimuli (standard, expected trials with high frequency). MMN can detect unexpected sensory inputs and provide information about the timing of how the brain processes information from different modalities. However, limited research has explored MMN’s application in multisensory processing, with most …

From Male Gaze To Feminist Vision: Exploration Of Women’S Roles In Film, Yuping Zeng

Theses - ALL

Every era has its own form of female consciousness awakening. As early as the 1970s, under the influence of feminist movements, a wave of outstanding female-centered films emerged. Simone de Beauvoir stated in The Second Sex: “The representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.” (166) Perhaps as a direct challenge to this so-called “absolute truth” created from the male perspective, female directors often crafted female characters who sharply contrasted with the popular portrayals of women in mainstream cinema. For …

An Examination Of Writing Attitudes And Writing Proficiency Throughout A Performance Feedback Writing Intervention, Sophia Victoria Alderman

Theses - ALL

Writing attitudes, defined as self-assessments of liking or disliking writing (Ekholm et al., 2017), are important motivational factors that can impact writing development. A review of the literature on writing attitudes found that attitudes positively predicted writing achievement and that writing interventions can increase writing attitudes (Ekholm et al., 2017). Existing empirical literature has primarily focused on examining writing attitudes before and after implementing writing interventions, which vary in empirical support (Boscolo et al., 2012; ; Knudson, 1991b, 1992; Seban, 2012). However, no studies have dynamically assessed writing attitudes throughout the course of an evidence-based writing intervention with emerging writers. …

Back Then, Long From Now, Joseph Henry Troxler

Theses - ALL

There is a disruption occurring in our homes, causing a dissociation from the now. Troxler examines the power of objects and spaces of our homes through his works, in the hope to create experiences that mirror a dissociative phenomenon of being pulled between past and future. Here, he provides context to his artistic process - establishing methods for his traditional painting practice, sculptures, and digital works. Through an interdisciplinary artistic practice, he asserts connections to his personal memory and experiences. Within this thesis, Troxler approaches a shared phenomenon of temporal dissociation by establishing our dwelling spaces as incubators for loaded …

Avatars In Virtual Live Streaming: Identity, Authenticity And Interaction, Yifan Wu

Theses - ALL

With the advancement and development of technology, people now have more and more choices for entertainment. Virtual live streaming, as a rapidly growing form of entertainment, is receiving increasing attention. As an intersection of emerging technology and traditional entertainment modes, virtual live streamers interact with audiences through virtual avatars, bringing a new entertainment experience while also raising many interesting research questions. This thesis focuses on virtual avatars, discussing how virtual live streamers and audiences perceive virtual avatars and how these avatars influence both streamers and the audience. More importantly, this thesis explores the role that virtual avatars play in the …

The Media Coverage Of The Israel And Gaza War: A Comparative Study Of Cnn And Al Jazeera, Fuhaid Alajmi

Theses - ALL

The Israel-Gaza War, which officially started on October 7, 2023, caused immense loss in the Middle East and attracted the international media's eyes. This study discusses the media’s framing in its reporting on the Israel-Gaza War, particularly as disseminated on two prominent global news providers’ online websites: CNN and Al Jazeera. The research explores the differences and similarities in framing the war using framing theory. The study examines how these news outlets covered these current events online in a period ranging from October 7, 2023, to April 7, 2024, using quantitative content analysis. It investigates the main framing of news …

Foraging Connections: Exploring The Relationship Between Optimal Foraging And Phonological Fluency Performance, Kimberly Savika Arjune

Theses - ALL

The semantic fluency task is a timed listing of as many words as possible within a certain category (Bousfield & Sedgewick, 1944). Optimal search requires traversing resource-rich clusters (groups of consecutive responses with shared characteristics) and weighing the benefit of staying in the current cluster, decreasing the rate of return, or switching to a new cluster with more easily accessible resources, but with the cost of search time (Charnov, 1976). According to the marginal value theorem, a switch to a new cluster should occur when the rate of finding words in the current cluster drops below the average rate for …

Express Yourself! Biculturalism, Ethnic Identity & Expression Through Instagram, Zanira Ghulamhussain

Theses - ALL

This qualitative study examines the relationship between biculturalism, ethnic identity, and Instagram use among second-generation Pakistani-Americans. To answer the research questions for this cross-sectional study, the method of virtual, semi structured in-depth interviews was utilized to collect data. Through interviews with second-generation Pakistani-Americans, the researcher explored how Instagram use intersects with ethnic identity and bicultural experiences. Interview data was collected, transcribed, analyzed, and categorized into various themes. Results suggest that Instagram plays a significant role in shaping and expressing ethnic identity, providing a platform for connection, cultural exchange, and personal exploration. This study contributes to understanding the role of social …

Developing Art Resources To Reduce Stress And Increase Well-Being For Healthcare Professionals, Elisabeth Ruth Baird

Theses - ALL

This study explored how art-based wellness resources can support healthcare professionals who provide direct patient care in hospital settings. A focus group of these providers shared their experiences with stress and burnout, identifying key challenges and needs. Based on their feedback, a Mini Wellness Manual was developed with practical, research-based art activities designed to help reduce stress and promote well-being. In a second focus group, participants reviewed the manual and provided feedback on its usefulness and accessibility. Findings showed that self-care interventions often place the burden on individuals rather than addressing the larger systemic issues that contribute to burnout, highlighting …

Encrypted Eroticism: Encoding And Decoding Strategies Against Censorship In Chinese Slash Fandom, Xiyin Li

Theses - ALL

This study examines how Chinese slash fans circumvent censorship through coding and decoding strategies (Hall, 1980). Based on online ethnography and participant observation of a 20-year slash fandom of a popular online novel, DMBJ, I find that fans employ linguistic wordplay across morphological, phonetic, and semantic dimensions with their linguistic literacy in Chinese. Fans actively extract scenes or descriptions from the original novel that align with erotic contexts and collage them into new slash fiction. This form of creation is not entirely original but involves poaching and recombining canonical texts to assign new sexual meanings. At the same time, fans …

Strategies For Integrating Teaching For Artistic Behavior (Tab) In A High School Ceramics Classroom, Joanna Gurney

Art 895 Research Papers

This research study reveals strategies for the integration of Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) in a high school Ceramics classroom. The primary objective is to identify potential, effective strategies for implementing TAB approaches within a single-media environment. Using a Case Study approach, this study examines and synthesizes existing theories with student outcomes, researcher field notes, teacher observations of a TAB classroom, and teacher reflections to understand how TAB-based pedagogical shifts can be used to effectively promote artistic behavior, while balancing student autonomy with the need for structured skill development in a single-media. Findings from this research will contribute to the …

Waste In The Food Industry: How Farm-To-Table Restaurants Reduce Food Waste And Promote A Circular Economy, Maia J. Werner

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper addresses the issue of food waste and how farm-to-table restaurants use minimal waste through their promotion of a circular economy. Using quantitative and qualitative data, Chapter 1 describes the current issue of wasteful human habits, diving into the causes and effects of food waste and how excessive waste affects our ecosystem. Chapter 2 explores the environmental history of farm-to-table restaurants and how we went from living on farms to living in cities, where there is a demand for more local produce. Chapter 3 delves into the environmental economic aspects of farm-to-table restaurants and their monetary versus non-monetary costs …

Authentically Assessing Student Learning In A Data Driven School System, Curtis Marolf

Art 895 Research Papers

As educators, we are often tasked with measuring student progress and understanding using standardized testing methods. As a visual arts instructor, I find these testing methods to be antiquated and inadequate for measuring students’ knowledge in the classroom, as they solely focus on an individual’s ability to recognize, recall or repeat factual data. If the goal of a quarterly assessment is to answer the question, “How do we know that the students know what we want them to know?” then standardized assessments are not the answer for the visual arts. The art classroom is a creative and expressive space, where …

Contending With Anxiety In The Elementary Art Classroom, Natalie Petrushonis

Art 895 Research Papers

The focus of this qualitative study is to explore how students are affected by anxiety in the art classroom. The major objective of this research is to explore methods and strategies to support students who suffer from anxiety to prevent it from negatively affecting their art education. The participants of this study will be elementary students within an art classroom who feel anxiety while engaging in artmaking. This case study research will provide insight into approaches that have been utilized to assist students with anxiety in art while observing the effectiveness of these methods with students in an elementary art …

The Effect Of Binaural Beats On Recognition And Recall, Meredith Brown

Honors Theses

Binaural beats, the playing of a different frequency in each ear that the brain perceives as one, have been tested with recognition and recall in forms of simple memory tasks. However, there is a lack of investigation on binaural beats' effect on recognition and recall in more complicated ways of these forms. A relationship between these would be beneficial and additive to the field of music and memory as a significant effect could indicate a place in education for binaural beats. It is hypothesized that binaural beats will have a positive effect on higher forms of recognition and recall. Participants …

Improved Survival With Improved Naprc Compliance: Our Single Institution Experience, Jacob Applegarth, Claire Bova, Scarlett B. Hao, Harry Wasvary

Conference Presentation Abstracts

The National Accreditation Program for Rectal Cancer (NAPRC) was developed in 2017 in an effort to better standardize rectal cancer care in the United States. This study investigates short-term outcomes of rectal cancer patients relative to compliance with NAPRC standards at an NAPRC accredited institution.

Effect Of Clean Closing Trays In Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Protocol On Surgical Site Infection Rates In Colorectal Surgeries, Elizabeth Carlson, Shelli Bergeron, Scarlett B. Hao, Kristin Lemarbe, Nora Laban, Diana Lee, Bradley Krasnick, Harry Wasvary

Conference Presentation Abstracts

Reducing surgical site infections (SSIs) after colorectal surgeries remains a key quality improvement target. The summative effect of multiple pre-, intra-, and post-operative interventions bundled as part of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programs have been shown to effectively reduce SSIs, however the individual impact of each intervention has not been well-studied. This study evaluates the impact of clean closing tray use on the rate of SSIs in colorectal surgeries.

When Patients Say No – Outcomes Of Opting Against Recommended Treatment After Total Neoadjuvant Therapy For Stage Ii/Iii Rectal Cancer, Scarlett B. Hao, Jacob Applegarth, Erin Mueller, Harry Wasvary, Matthew Ziegler, Bradley Krasnick

Conference Presentation Abstracts

Patients with stage II/III rectal cancer, upon completion of total neoadjuvant therapy (TNT), may be recommended total mesorectal excision (TME) or a watch-and-wait (WW) approach depending on their clinical tumor response. However, in shared decision-making, patients may ultimately decide for surgery when it is not recommended or against surgery when it is recommended. This study aimed to describe the tumor response outcomes of patients with LARC who pursue and do not pursue the recommended approach following TNT.

Evaluating Advanced Aerial Firefighting Technologies For Effective Implementation In Central Appalachia, Milo M. Heidkamp

Honors Theses

This thesis evaluates emerging aerial firefighting technologies, including training systems, aircraft-based sensing and surveillance systems, and unmanned aerial systems for effective implementation in Central Appalachia, and even more specifically, Eastern Kentucky. Due to the lack of municipal and state-owned manned aerial firefighting (suppression) aircraft, it was concluded that UAS and Multi-mission-capable sensing aircraft were the most practical for implementation. Two different proposals for the implementation of these technologies are made: One for the implementation of sensing and surveillance equipment on state-owned aircraft, and one recommends the widespread implementation of UAS for state and municipal fire protection agencies. By conducting a …