Digital Commons Network^™

Interrelationships Of Maternal Characteristics In Hair Sheep, Rachel Bell, Alyssa Howard, Rickalyn Rayburn, Elena Verdecchia, Madison Werner, Flint Harrelson, Patricia Harrelson

2025 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Since the spring of 2022, the MSU sheep flock has been an Innovation Flock for the Sheep GEMS project, led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The GEMS project is a multi-breed, national project evaluating longevity of ewes within flocks. Our part as a participant in the project involves collecting and sending raw data which is compiled into 1 very large data set. The research discussed here uses our preliminary data from the 2022 through 2025 lambing seasons collected from our Katahdin ewes (n = 57; 1-6 years of age). Collected data included fecal egg count (FEC), body condition scoring (BCS), …

Sammie Slusher: The Price Of Freedom, Bryce Fletcher, Dawson Helton, Ty Ledford, Adrian Mandzy

2025 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

This presentation was a public history project completed in the fall of 2024 for Junior Seminar (HST-380-502). This project was completed by Dawson Helton, Bryce Fletcher, and Ty Ledford. The project was a part of The Impact of World War II in Eastern Kentucky Collection. Our project, in particular, was titled Sammie Slusher: The Price of Freedom. The project consisted of a poster and a PowerPoint presentation covering the life and military service of Magoffin County native and Silver Star recipient Staff Sergeant Sammie Slusher. The university printed a physical poster, and digital copies of both the poster and PowerPoint …

Foreign Involvement And Economic Outcomes In Coups, Paul Hanson

SPARK Symposium Presentations

A variety of factors come into play when determining economic outcomes. One of these factors is tied to political stability. After coup events, the literature finds that economies perform worse overall. This literature has explored other factors tied to coup events, such as overall political stability and the effects of different governing types on economies. Previous methods of exploring coups did not permit foreign intervention to take an active role, or even any role in most cases, in their models. This study will explore the correlation between economic output, utilizing GDP data from the Penn World Table, and foreign intervention …

Carol, Jey Maroney, Katherine Praet

SPARK Symposium Presentations

The film Carol follows two women, one in later adulthood and one in early adulthood. The plot follows their journey through life and love while also learning about themselves. They navigate the challenges of the 1950s where homosexuality was not accepted. The film is a coming-of-age love story for the main character Therese, this can be seen in her wardrobe shift throughout the film. This presentation discusses the cultural significance of the 2015 film through fashion. We chose this movie to study because it reflects a widely marginalized group for the time it is set in. The movie is based …

Engaging The Community Wellcore Series: How A Belmont Honors Collective Tackled The Problem Of The Perceived Lack Of Engagement With Belmont Students Volunteering In The Local Nashville Community., Katelyn Anziano, Ella Buettner, Emerson Carrigan, Karolin Hanna, Lauren Watts

SPARK Symposium Presentations

As part of their Honors College requirement, students are required to take Project Planning and Execution classes during their junior year where students utilize “team-based, problem-solving learning strategies coupled with individual research and application”. This year, a group of five female Honor students formed a small group they coined the “Caring Catalyst Collective”. The group perceived a lack of engagement from Belmont students with volunteer opportunities in the Nashville community and beyond. To combat this issue, they sought for tangible ways to inspire a boost of engagement of Belmont students with local Nashville non-profits and organizations, in addition to helping …

The Ideology Of Isolation, Chase Robbins

SPARK Symposium Presentations

No abstract provided.

Nursing Education On The Health Benefits Of Animal Assisted Therapy, Sara C. Barker, Allie P. Dunlap, Daniel T. Do, Charde Willis

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Background: Does nurse education for pediatric oncology families teaching daily animal-assisted therapy (AAT) health benefits reduce anxiety from 35% to 18% compared to current practice?

Methods: A literature search was conducted using CINAHL (356 articles), PubMed (412 articles), and Google Scholar (289 articles) with keywords including animal-assisted interaction, pediatric cancer, pet therapy, psychological support, caregivers, and psychosocial outcomes. Filters applied included peer-reviewed articles, English language, full text, publication within the last five years, randomized controlled or quasi-experimental study design, and relevance to nursing practice. 4 articles were chosen due to being directly relevant to education related to AAT and psychosocial …

Responsible Pain Management For Postpartum Patients, Anna Beth Wyatt, Isabella B. Conwell, Kaley E. Edelbrock, Missy M. Sterkel

SPARK Symposium Presentations

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s postpartum unit on 4 East, uncontrolled pain is a leading cause of decreased patient satisfaction and increased risk for complications. Effective, timely, and conscientious pain management plays a crucial role in improving patient satisfaction and promoting safer recoveries. Given the wide range of pain management needs due to varied birth experiences and complications, nursing judgment and clear patient communication are essential in ensuring both comfort and long-term safety. This makes 4 East an ideal unit to explore standardizing communication strategies to optimize patient care. The primary goal of our intervention is to enhance patient satisfaction …

Power Of Play, Roqaua H. Feron

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This presentation explores the Power of Play in speech therapy, focusing on how games and storytelling enhance language development. By incorporating familiar stories and pretend play, speech-language pathologists can spark greater engagement and expression in students. Drawing on research that highlights the cognitive and communicative benefits of play-based learning, this study is supported by observations of a middle school child working with a speech pathologist. The findings suggest that integrating playful, narrative-driven activities can significantly support language growth and confidence in young learners.

Importance Of Nursing Hourly Rounding On A Step-Down Unit To Decrease Falls And Call Bell Usage, Brigitte A. Mcguire, Jayden Stidham, Emma Schmidt

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Previous research shows that not performing hourly rounding is associated with increased patient falls, worse patient outcomes, decreased patient satisfaction with their hospital stay, and more frequent call bell usage. We chose to focus on implementing hourly rounds on the step-down unit at St. Thomas West in Nashville. The implementation plan includes hosting an educational seminar for staff nurses in which the process and importance of hourly rounding will be discussed. At this time, the charge nurse will also review the incentives and new charting system. We also allocated finances to the IT department to implement a section for hourly …

Exploring And Improving Generative Ai Usage At Belmont University, Stiles Logan, Wyatt Jones

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Abstract

The development of widely accessible generative AI tools such as ChatGPT has significantly impacted higher education. Professors and students alike now have the capability to synthesize information from across the whole internet in seconds, which gives rise to new methods of learning, teaching, and cheating. Through this project, we will form policy recommendations regarding both student use of and faculty instruction on generative AI at Belmont, with the goal of creating a more equitable and effective learning environment. The ways in which Belmont University chooses to handle this development will significantly impact the quality and equity of instruction and …

Data-Driven Default Prediction: Insights From Lending Club, Shumaila Gilani, Viktoria Kleer Kliimand

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending has transformed consumer credit markets by providing an alternative to traditional banking institutions. LendingClub, a pioneer in this space, facilitates lending between individual investors and borrowers through a data-driven risk assessment model. Our research aims to enhance loan default prediction by developing a more precise classification model based on LendingClub’s historical loan data, ultimately improving risk assessment for investors.

Utilizing a dataset of approximately 650,000 loans from 2007 to 2015, we construct a predictive model to classify loan default risk. Our approach focuses on key financial indicators, including interest rates, borrower grades, debt-to-income ratio, and delinquency history, …

Advancing Study Abroad As A Marquee Offering In Graduate Programs, Natalie Thibault, Kameron Ziesig Sherrill, Levis Padron, Troy Maxoutopoulis

SPARK Symposium Presentations

The purpose of our Scholarship, Performance, Art, Research, and Knowledge (SPARK) Symposium presentation is a direct ask to leadership about the incorporation of study abroad programming as a marquee offering of graduate programs, including Massey programs. The undergraduate study abroad program is much more robust and bringing attention to graduate programs is one of the desired outcomes of our presentation.

We believe that studying abroad is a solution that

1. Helps Belmont deliver on its 2030 vision to be the “leading Christ-centered university in the world”

2. Is critical AS business students to develop cross-cultural literacy fluency as a coveted …

Preventing Central Line Associated Bloodstream Infections In Icu Patients, Emma Veres, Riley D'Andrade, Josie Cowart

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Group Members: Josie Cowart, Riley D’Andrade, Emma Veres

CLABSI Project Summary

Our Change Project aimed to determine factors that contributed to central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) and to develop an intervention that will reduce this complication in the hospital setting. Some contributing factors to this complication are staffing ratios, length of time the central line is in place, frequency of dressing changes, and training for he nursing staff on CLABSI prevention. Upon discussing with ICU nurses, we decided what intervention could be most beneficial in the hospital setting, and we developed a concept of an online course that would need …

Physical Activity Curriculum And Marketing Strategy For Dale Vuelta To Empower Young Girls In Mexico., Reagan A. Dodson, Eunice M. Lee

SPARK Symposium Presentations

The World Health Organization (WHO) found that nearly one-third of the world’s adult population are physically inactive, not meeting the global recommendations of at least 150 minutes of necessary physical activity per week (WHO, 2024). Adolescent girls were less active than adolescent boys, with 85% in comparison to 78%. In Mexico, 88% of girls, ages 11-17, are physically inactive (WHO, 2022). In Mexico, the stigma around girls practicing sports remains strong; gender-based violence grows by the year, and girls are often bullied, questioned, or discouraged from participating in sports (B. Möller, personal communication, September 23, 2024). Dale Vuelta, a non-profit …

The Cybernetic Unconscious, Samuel Davenport

SPARK Symposium Presentations

The internet is the most perfect incarnation of a process that has repeated across centuries and networks. In the mind, we call it psychosis, in society, we call it religion, and on the internet, it is becoming the singularity. My comic, ELDERNET,
is a cyberweird analysis and critique of the internet as the collective locus of the unconscious. Drawing inspiration from media from French post-structuralist philosophy to 1920s Weird Fiction, I reveal the representations of horror within the automatic network.

Family Drama: Unpacking Your Communication Style In Relation To Authority Figures, Makenzie Boylston, Averie Owens, Abbey Fies, Rose Kores

SPARK Symposium Presentations

An important aspect of our personality is how we communicate. Our expressiveness and communication skills drive our interactions and interpersonal experiences. Previous research has found that a family’s usage of transparent communication and expression influences the children’s future behavior and attitude in terms of leadership and sociability (Huang, 1999).There is additional research that found that one’s communication with authority figures, such as teachers and physicians, is impacted by how the authority figure communicates with them (Drury, 2003; Frymier & Houser, 2000; Kiesler & Auerbach, 2003). Our study examined the correlations between familial expressiveness, authority figure communication skills, and one’s dominance. …

After The Play: A Collection Of Creative Nonfiction Short Stories On The Mental Health And Pressures Surrounding College Athletes, Megan E. Konermann

Undergraduate Theses

This collection of creative nonfiction forefronts the often-overlooked mental health struggles and pressures that collegiate athletes face. These short stories explore the usefulness of the genre to engage readers on a deeper level and reveal real experiences. Each of the three stories incorporates nonfiction aspects collected in interviews conducted with current collegiate athletes and creatively models the literary style and technique of a prominent literary figure. In sharing these creative nonfiction short stories, this project works to build a connection between the reader and these athletes, fostering future support, empathy, and understanding.

Game Changer: Visualizing Player Progress, Brielle Croke

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This project focuses on analyzing athlete performance and strength metrics for a sports facility using historical data spanning over 10 years. The facility tracks athlete performance throughout the year, and this study aimed to explore patterns in the data while introducing Power BI as a visualization tool for the first time. The project involved extensive data cleaning and merging multiple datasets to align player records with their performance history. The cleaned data was then loaded into Power BI and Python for analysis. Various analytical methods, including K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) clustering and bootstrapping, were applied to uncover trends in player development. …

Analysis Of The Tennessee Covenant Marriage, Lucy C. Spivey

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Most recent data from the World Population Review suggests that Tennessee’s divorce rate (3.3% per 1,000 people) is among the highest divorce rates in the country (2024). Although the country and state average rate has decreased in the past five years, many Tennesseans are concerned at the number of failed marriages. House Bill 0315, introduced by Republican Representative Gino Bulso, is a result of this growing concern. House Bill 0315, better known as the “Tennessee Covenant Marriage Act,” aims to strengthen Tennessee marriages by limiting divorce options for couples and requiring a premarital counseling course (Jenkins, 2025). Proponents of this …

A Theorem On Parity That's So Odd, You Can't Even, Cara Admiraal

SPARK Symposium Presentations

In the study of Pythagorean triples (PT's) of integers $(a,b,c)$ satisfying $a^2+b^2=c^2$, it is natural to wonder: do we learn anything new by considering the triples of the form $(\pm a, \pm b, c)$? What about the triple $(b,a,c)$? The analysis of primitive PT's (PPT's), viewed as rational points on the unit circle, behaves predictably depending on one's answer to either question. In the former, one can quadrisect the unit circle and perform an analysis on each quadrant. In this talk, we focus on proving a bijection between two types of PT's, establishing a double cover of the set of …

Analyzing Musical Emotions: A Multi-Dataset Approach To Sentiment And Mood Classification In Songs, Mahad Syed

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Music evokes a wide range of emotions, yet most music recommendation systems focus on sound and listening patterns rather than the meaning of lyrics. This project enhances lyric-based emotion recognition by applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to classify song lyrics into emotional categories.

I used eight datasets from Kaggle, including collections of lyrics, emotion labels, and audio features, providing a strong foundation for analysis. Our approach combines traditional NLP techniques (like TF-IDF and Word2Vec) with advanced deep learning models (such as BERT and XLNet) to classify lyrics into categories like happy, sad, angry, calm, romantic, and …

“If, In That Strife, ‘T Were Given To See / The Glory Of Thermopylae”: Connections To The Classics In The Alamo And The Texas Revolution, Austin M. Pritchett

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This historical research paper argues that connections to classical tradition were made in the rhetoric and symbolism of the Texas Revolution as a means of creating a national identity as Texans and as a way of garnering support from the Unites States for their cause.

Having established the background of the Texas Revolution of 1835-1836, the famous Battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, and the Battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece, I bring forth examples from primary sources of important figures using comparisons to classical history. The classical connections made in those writings were used to justify their …

Social Media's Impact On Youth, Nina Greco

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Social media poses a growing threat to youth, exposing children to inappropriate content, unhealthy comparisons, mental health challenges, addiction, and more. In collaboration with the non-profit organization Wired Human, which is dedicated to creating safe online environments for children and raising awareness of the long-term risks, we have conducted extensive research and advocacy efforts. As part of this initiative, we surveyed students aged 16 to 25 to better understand these dangers. Partnering with Wired Human, we presented our findings to leaders at The United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., urging action to protect children online. In this presentation, we will …

Effectiveness Of Music Therapy In Managing Pain And Anxiety In Pediatric Burn Patients Compared To Traditional Methods Alone, Alejandro Miguel Santos, Maekalagail Santos

Nursing | Student Research Posters

Introduction:

Burn injuries are among the most painful conditions for children. While pharmacological interventions are commonly used, non-pharmacological strategies like music therapy are gaining attention for their potential to improve patient outcomes. Previous research indicates that music therapy can reduce pain and anxiety in various settings, but its impact on pediatric burn patients remains underexplored.

Objective:

This study aims to explore the effectiveness of music therapy in managing pain and anxiety in pediatric burn patients, comparing it to traditional pain management methods alone.

Research Question:

Does music therapy affect pain and anxiety in pediatric burn unit patients when added to …

The Health Impact Of Clinical Training On Nursing Students In Cambodia, Kimberly Aguilar Mondragon, Felicia Kim Yee

Nursing | Student Research Posters

Background: Clinical training presents significant challenges for nursing students worldwide, particularly evident in developing countries like Cambodia, where these difficulties are intensified by a lack of training, resources, and health issues like stress and fatigue. Many students struggle without adequate guidance, forcing them to navigate complex clinical environments independently. These factors not only impact students’ confidence and academic performance, but also their health and well-being. Through this study, we can gain insight into nursing in a developing country that hasn’t been widely studied, contributing to global nursing research. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the health impact …

Perfectionism, Anxiety, And Depression: A Comparison Of Student Mental Health At East Texas A&M University: Honors Vs Non-Honors, Connor Hall

Honors Theses

Honors students at East Texas A&M University (ETAMU) may have higher expectations to succeed due to greater course load and pressure versus students who are not in the honors program. These expectations can lead to stress that may cause perfectionism, anxiety, or depression (Rice, 2006; Wan, 2022; Van Praag, 2004). This study sought to determine if higher expectations and course load could lead to differences in mental health in honors versus non-honors students at East Texas A&M University. In order to determine these mental health characteristics, data was gathered using responses to a Qualtrics survey sent to 7527 ETAMU undergraduate …

The Impact Of Race On Sentencing Outcomes In The United States, Tijana Krivokapic

Honors Theses

The United States, with just 5% of the world’s population, houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Moreover, the racial composition of the United States prison population is 56.8% White, 38.0% Black, 2.9% Native American, and 1.5% Asian (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2023). This highlights the disproportionate presence of minority offenders in the prison system, prompting concerns about racial disparities in sentencing. While research on sentencing is robust, much of the research relies on outdated data sources. This study adopts a contemporary approach by utilizing current data to examine whether the race of an offender affects two essential sentencing …

The Impact Of Quiet Quitting On University Students: A Phenomenological Investigation Providing Student Perspectives And Institutional Implications, Molly Caldwell

Honors Theses

This study explored the potential phenomena of quiet quitting in higher education among college students and how they approached their role as a student. The researcher sought to understand if the disconnect observed in current students resembled quiet quitting behaviors and to determine if there was a phenomenon beyond student disengagement. The research questions investigated whether a phenomenon was occurring among college students independent of disengagement, if college students engaged in behaviors indicative of quiet quitting, and if students perceived that quiet quitting had any impact on their educational outcomes such as grades, involvement, graduation, or job prospects. Data collection …

The Implications Of The Scientific Developments Behind Oxidative Stress, Heat-Shock Proteins, And Antioxidants On Neurodegenerative Pathology, Nolan Wilbourn

Honors Theses

Homeostasis is essential for the health and development of all organisms, serving as a universal defense mechanism that ensures the stability of physiological processes faced with external and internal stimuli in the form of health challenges (Archana et al., 2017). Maintaining homeostasis is crucial for our health, as it helps keep the body's internal balance. However, this delicate equilibrium is challenged by various environmental factors, such as diet, exposure to chemicals, and fluctuations in temperature (Collier et al., 2017). These disruptions can lead to dysfunction in cellular processes, particularly affecting the production and regulation of proteins vital for biological functions. …