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The Music Education Gender Divide At The University Of Northern Iowa, Abigail Wendland Jan 2025

The Music Education Gender Divide At The University Of Northern Iowa, Abigail Wendland

Honors Program Theses

While anyone with proper training can direct a band well, the definitive stereotype in music education is that male directors are the default. Women face a multitude of challenges when going into the field because of this stereotype, which is the direct result of decades of prejudice that are now historical tradition. These challenges include the perceived need to adopt a male persona while on the podium, the challenges of working as a public school band director while being a mother, and the guilt that accompanies many women in the field. Obstacles such as these have strongly contributed to the …


The Effect Of Mitochondrial Disease On The Eyes And Possible Treatments With An Emphasis On Leber Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, Olivia Chambers Jan 2025

The Effect Of Mitochondrial Disease On The Eyes And Possible Treatments With An Emphasis On Leber Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, Olivia Chambers

Honors Program Theses

Mitochondrial diseases are a diverse group of genetic disorders that impair cellular energy production, often leading to multisystem complications, including vision loss. This thesis explores how mitochondrial dysfunction impacts ocular health, with an emphasis on Leber Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON), a disorder caused by point mutations in mitochondrial DNA affecting Complex I of the oxidative phosphorylation pathway. Through an extensive literature review, this research examines the mechanisms by which mitochondrial mutations damage retinal ganglion cells and evaluates current and emerging treatment approaches. Pharmacological therapies, such as idebenone and other quinone analogs, demonstrate limited but promising results in stabilizing early-stage vision …


Florentine Impressions: Artists Abroad, Jaylin Vander Wiel Jan 2025

Florentine Impressions: Artists Abroad, Jaylin Vander Wiel

Honors Program Theses

Florence, Italy has long been a destination for traveling artists and those looking for international inspiration. I wanted to be part of this tradition and experience my own contemporary version of the Grand Tour, a rite of passage trip to Europe for men in the 17th to early 19th century. Several notable female artists also participated in the Grand Tour or their own European travel and served as inspiration for this project. As someone who values travel and planned to study abroad, I was drawn to this history and the idea of developing as a person and artist through immersion …


Addressing Iowa’S Teacher Shortage: University-Led Strategies And Their Impact, Makenzie Mae Morris Jan 2025

Addressing Iowa’S Teacher Shortage: University-Led Strategies And Their Impact, Makenzie Mae Morris

Honors Program Theses

Teacher shortages continue to be a critical challenge for Iowa’s education system, affecting both the recruitment and retention of qualified educators. Over the past decade, Iowa’s Regent universities have made significant changes to their teacher preparation programs in response to declining enrollment and workforce demands. This study examines how these programs, particularly at the University of Northern Iowa, have evolved through the expansion of online offerings, accelerated licensure pathways, and strengthened student support systems. The purpose of this research was to identify institutional strategies that effectively address the teacher shortage and provide insight into sustainable models for future teacher preparation. …


Morphtogo: A Video Classification Model For Predicting Protein Functions From Conformational Morphs, Dylan William Bock Jan 2025

Morphtogo: A Video Classification Model For Predicting Protein Functions From Conformational Morphs, Dylan William Bock

Honors Program Theses

Protein function prediction is a crucial task in bioinformatics, traditionally approached through sequence-based, structure-based, or interaction network models. These models, however, fail to capture transient conformations that occur during large-scale conformational changes. MorphToGO proposes a novel methodology of function prediction with the development of a video classification model to analyze morph animations. The image classification portion of the model utilizes the pretrained EfficientNetV2 model to extract features from animation frames, and the video portion consists of a modified GRU architecture for sequence-to-sequence embedding regression to predict the protein’s functional semantics. A custom bidirectional cosine loss function was developed to handle …


The Effects Of Of Both Parent And Child Technology Use On Developing Literacy Abilities, Ava Mcmenomy Jan 2025

The Effects Of Of Both Parent And Child Technology Use On Developing Literacy Abilities, Ava Mcmenomy

Honors Program Theses

This study explored the effects of both parent and child technology use on developing literacy abilities. Research is limited in this area, but is becoming increasingly important as technology continues to evolve and become more commonplace in the lives of both adults and children. This study aimed to determine if there was a correlation between technology use and decreased literacy abilities of children. This study also explored if increased technology use in conjunction with decreased quality of parent-child interactions resulted in decreased literacy skills. Research was conducted through a survey and 15 responses were analyzed. No decreased literacy abilities of …


Culture, Labor Laws, And Foreign Investment: An Analysis On The Impact Of Uncertainty Avoidance, Annalee Benisek Jan 2025

Culture, Labor Laws, And Foreign Investment: An Analysis On The Impact Of Uncertainty Avoidance, Annalee Benisek

Honors Program Theses

No abstract provided.


A Case Study Of Harmful Revisionist History: An Analysis Of Nada Por Lo Que Pedir Perdón By Marcelo Gullo Omodeo, Anna Anderson Jan 2025

A Case Study Of Harmful Revisionist History: An Analysis Of Nada Por Lo Que Pedir Perdón By Marcelo Gullo Omodeo, Anna Anderson

Honors Program Theses

No abstract provided.


Strengthening Social-Emotional Learning For Elementary Students Through Explicit Instruction, Miah Phalen Jan 2025

Strengthening Social-Emotional Learning For Elementary Students Through Explicit Instruction, Miah Phalen

Honors Program Theses

Teaching social-emotional learning skills has been found to yield various behavioral and academic benefits for students, yet there has been limited research into effective instructional practices for teaching these skills. This qualitative study examined the extent to which specific explicit instruction elements are present in kindergarten lessons from three evidence-based SEL curricula: Kindness in the Classroom, Leader in Me, and Second Step. Each of these lessons was rated on a 0-2 scale regarding the presence of clearly established learning goals, lesson opening, modeling, guided practice, independent practice, opportunities for feedback, lesson closure, and skill sequencing. Results of this study indicated …


Facilitating A Class For All Students - An Extensive Literature Review, Maya Lynn Mcdaniels Jan 2025

Facilitating A Class For All Students - An Extensive Literature Review, Maya Lynn Mcdaniels

Honors Program Theses

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), every child with a recognized disability is guaranteed a free appropriate public education (FAPE). This means that it is my job as a future elementary school special education teacher to provide FAPE by meeting students’ individual needs, often through an individualized education program (IEP), which includes the provision of specially designed instruction, services, and supports. For example, if an IEP calls for a behavior intervention plan, educators are required to implement proactive supports, such as structure and reinforcement systems or scheduled breaks, to ensure equitable access to learning. As an educator, it is …


A Personal Exploration Of The Cultural Impact Of Shinto And The Meiji Shrine On Japan, Ashley Uitermarkt Jan 2025

A Personal Exploration Of The Cultural Impact Of Shinto And The Meiji Shrine On Japan, Ashley Uitermarkt

Honors Program Theses

This project is a personal exploration regarding the cultural impact of Shinto in Japan, specifically exploring the Meiji Shrine. Shinto is a commonly practiced “religion” or tradition that is a part of the identity of the Japanese people. Like many Americans, I have had exposure to pieces of Japan through popular media like anime and manga. I have also visited Japan on three occasions. These avenues have given me some understanding of Japan but often lead to misconceptions and gaps in understanding of the culture as a whole. Shinto is intertwined with Japanese tradition in a way that many Westerners, …


The Role Of Financial Literacy Education In Shaping Students’ Future Financial Decisions, Arianna Shornock Jan 2025

The Role Of Financial Literacy Education In Shaping Students’ Future Financial Decisions, Arianna Shornock

Honors Program Theses

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the effectiveness of financial literacy programs and their influence on students' future decision-making. In this study, survey data were collected from a random sample of young adults aged 18-25 years, primarily located in the Midwest region of the United States. This study suggests that students who took a financial literacy class are less likely to perform better on financial literacy topics and are less likely to have higher perceived confidence when making financial decisions, which contrasts with the existing evidence in the literature over financial literacy programs. Possible explanations for this deviation …


Effect Of Seed Mix Design And Planting Time On Floral Resources, Madison Carleton Jan 2025

Effect Of Seed Mix Design And Planting Time On Floral Resources, Madison Carleton

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of different management strategies used in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) prairie restorations. Specifically, this research assesses how well these practices support pollinator communities, which serve as indicators of habitat quality.


Bringing The Antiquities Act Into The Modern Age, Chad Squitieri Jan 2025

Bringing The Antiquities Act Into The Modern Age, Chad Squitieri

Scholarly Articles

The Antiquities Act empowers the President both to declare national monuments and to reserve the “smallest area” of land compatible with the preservation of such monuments. Modern Presidents have adopted expansive interpretations of those authorities—purporting, for example, to reserve entire “ecosystems” as national monuments, and to claim that the Act’s reference to “land” includes state-sized swaths of the ocean floor. Until recently, Presidents’ expansive readings of the Act have gone largely unchecked by courts. But in Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Ass’n v. Raimondo, Chief Justice Roberts expressed interest in reconsidering “[t]he scope of the objects that can be designated under the [Antiquities] …


Beyond Judicial Dialogue: Reference To Domestic Law By The Inter–American Court Of Human Rights, Soledad Bertelsen Jan 2025

Beyond Judicial Dialogue: Reference To Domestic Law By The Inter–American Court Of Human Rights, Soledad Bertelsen

Scholarly Articles

The recent freeze of U.S. funding to the Inter–American Commission on Human Rights serves as a reminder of how fragile the Inter–American System of Human Rights truly is. The effectiveness of the Inter–American institutions largely depends on their legitimacy in the eyes of the member states. This article argues how the legitimacy of the Inter–American Court can be enhanced by the language used in its judgments. The paper focuses on how references to domestic law in the case–law of the Inter–American Court can persuade states to comply with its decisions. Citations transcend the much–discussed judicial dialogue since they also reference …


Bruen Was Right, J. Joel Alicea Jan 2025

Bruen Was Right, J. Joel Alicea

Scholarly Articles

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen is one of the most methodologically significant—and widely maligned—constitutional law decisions of the last several decades. By rejecting the tiers of scrutiny that have loomed large in rights jurisprudence since the 1960s and substituting a text-and-history test for Second Amendment cases, Bruen signals a potential transformation of American constitutional law far beyond the Second Amendment context. Given Bruen’s methodological significance and the text-and-history approach it represents, one might have expected that the debate over Bruen would break down along familiar lines, with originalists defending Bruen and non-originalists critiquing it. Yet, the …


Finding The Major Questions Doctrine, Chad Squitieri Jan 2025

Finding The Major Questions Doctrine, Chad Squitieri

Scholarly Articles

The major questions doctrine has been invoked primarily in the rulemaking context, where it requires agencies to identify particularly clear statutory authority before promulgating rules of “major” importance. Some scholars have suggested that the doctrine is a tool that should be limited to agency actions that are purportedly “legislative” in nature (e.g., rule makings)—meaning the doctrine would not apply in other contexts, such as agency adjudications and enforcement actions that may not be similarly “legislative.” This Essay responds by arguing that the major questions doctrine is best understood as a limit on executive authority—meaning the doctrine could apply across a …


Charitable Giving And Civil Rights: A Defense Of Private Remedial Action, Roger Colinvaux Jan 2025

Charitable Giving And Civil Rights: A Defense Of Private Remedial Action, Roger Colinvaux

Scholarly Articles

Private charitable organizations have long enjoyed the freedom to determine their mission and render appropriate charitable assistance, including by taking race, ethnicity, gender, and other traits into account when responding to the harmful effects of past discrimination, a practice this Feature terms “private remedial action.” The legality of this kind of trait-conscious assistance is strongly supported by the early American history of trait-based associations, federal tax law, and core values of free association. However, new legal and political attacks on affirmative action of all types have put charities on the defensive, leading many groups to change their programs and behavior …


Constitutional Theory At A Catholic University, J. Joel Alicea Jan 2025

Constitutional Theory At A Catholic University, J. Joel Alicea

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.


Foundations Of The Right Of Charitable Uses, Adam J. Macleod, Mark David Hall Jan 2025

Foundations Of The Right Of Charitable Uses, Adam J. Macleod, Mark David Hall

Scholarly Articles

In recent years, municipalities around the United States have enacted ordinances that prohibit or restrict food-sharing in public places. These ordinances make it difficult for charitable souls to share food with those most in need. In one case, a town in Arizona arrested a woman under an ordinance that prohibits sharing food in public for charitable purposes.
The closest analogs to these laws are the English anti-almsgiving acts of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. One must look that far back in history because infringements of the right of charitable uses of property are exceedingly rare. Indeed, throughout the history of …


A Workable Common Law Baseline For Regulatory Takings, Adam J. Macleod Jan 2025

A Workable Common Law Baseline For Regulatory Takings, Adam J. Macleod

Scholarly Articles

Rights to use property are property rights. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires governments to provide just compensation when they take property. In our constitutional republic, legislatures are competent to change the law, and legal changes sometimes alter private rights, including use rights. The Takings Clause does not forbid such legal changes. It only requires compensation for property rights taken as a result. To give use rights the constitutional protection that the Takings Clause requires, courts need a baseline of rightful property use to show when a change in the law that adversely affects use rights amounts to …


Forging Monetary Hawks: Early-Life Inflation Experiences And Government Debt In Africa, Christine Strong Jan 2025

Forging Monetary Hawks: Early-Life Inflation Experiences And Government Debt In Africa, Christine Strong

Economics Faculty Publications

This study uses a novel dataset to examine the impact of early‐life inflation experiences on government debt across 30 African nations from 1980 to 2022. We propose that central bankers who encountered inflation crises during their formative years are more likely to develop preferences for hawkish monetary policies. However, for these preferences to influence fiscal outcomes, central bankers must operate within an environment of institutional independence. Indeed, our analysis reveals that past exposures to inflation crises, on their own, have no statistically significant impact on government debt. However, when central bank independence is accounted for, a significant negative relationship emerges, …


What Role Do Finance Ministers Play In Political Business Cycles? Evidence-Based On A New African Dataset, Christine Olivia Strong Jan 2025

What Role Do Finance Ministers Play In Political Business Cycles? Evidence-Based On A New African Dataset, Christine Olivia Strong

Economics Faculty Publications

This study investigates how the personal characteristics of finance ministers influence political budget cycles in Africa. Using a new dataset covering 300 finance ministers across 23 countries from 1980 to 2020, we find that political budget cycles primarily take the form of increased government consumption during election years. Ministers with prior central banking experience are less likely to amplify spending in election years, effectively curbing political budget cycles. These results remain consistent after accounting for institutional quality, ministerial tenure, and other confounding factors. The findings contribute to the literature by showing that the appointment of finance ministers in African countries …


"Acoustical Bedlam": A Contextualization Of Beethoven's Christus, Leanna R. York Jan 2025

"Acoustical Bedlam": A Contextualization Of Beethoven's Christus, Leanna R. York

The Beethoven Journal

The premiere of Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge at the Theater an der Wien on April 5, 1803, marked the composer’s first and only contribution to the complex tradition of the German oratorio. Since the genre’s inception at the turn of the eighteenth century, it reflected artistic, literary, and theological controversies of its day. Beethoven’s chosen theme, the passion of Christ, came with its own set of ever-shifting compositional and textual expectations, influenced by older traditions of sepolcri and staged oratorios (common in Vienna and at the court of the elector of Cologne after mid-century) and lyric works such as Graun’s …


Second Thoughts? Czerny, Beethoven, And The Ninth Symphony’S Choral Finale, Mark Evan Bonds Jan 2025

Second Thoughts? Czerny, Beethoven, And The Ninth Symphony’S Choral Finale, Mark Evan Bonds

The Beethoven Journal

Sometime after the premiere of the Ninth Symphony, according to Carl Czerny, Beethoven told a small circle of friends that he had made a “wrong choice” in writing a choral finale, that he was resolved to write a purely instrumental finale in its place, and that he already had an idea in his head for the new finale. Czerny never committed this report to writing, but he did transmit it orally to three others who did: Leopold von Sonnleithner, Otto Jahn, and Gustav Nottebohm. Anton Schindler would later deny the report, but the available evidence strongly supports the veracity of …


Innovative Sonorities: Atypical Pitch Orders In Beethoven's Piano Trios, Yoko Maruyama Jan 2025

Innovative Sonorities: Atypical Pitch Orders In Beethoven's Piano Trios, Yoko Maruyama

The Beethoven Journal

In his chamber music with keyboard, Beethoven famously emancipated the cello from its bass function to make it equal with the other instruments, as has been repeatedly noted. Some studies have also highlighted, partly in relation to this emancipation, the sonorous balance between strings and piano in Beethoven’s chamber works. The pitch relationship between the cello and violin in his piano trios has been less discussed, yet attending to both parts reveals a tendency to use an atypical order in which the cello’s pitch is set above the violin or between the violin’s chord tones. This tendency increases from Beethoven’s …


Review Of From The Ruins Of Enlightenment: Beethoven And Schubert In Their Solitude By Richard Kramer, Sarah Waltz Jan 2025

Review Of From The Ruins Of Enlightenment: Beethoven And Schubert In Their Solitude By Richard Kramer, Sarah Waltz

The Beethoven Journal

No abstract provided.


Review Of The Catholic Beethoven By Nicholas Chong, David Wyn Jones Jan 2025

Review Of The Catholic Beethoven By Nicholas Chong, David Wyn Jones

The Beethoven Journal

No abstract provided.


Conference Report: 200th Anniversary Of Beethoven's 1824 Academy Concerts (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, 2024), Mary Kirchdorfer, Cheston Humphries Jan 2025

Conference Report: 200th Anniversary Of Beethoven's 1824 Academy Concerts (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, 2024), Mary Kirchdorfer, Cheston Humphries

The Beethoven Journal

No abstract provided.


Biomedical Mxene-Polymer Nanocomposites: Advancing Photothermal Therapy, Antibacterial Action, And Smart Drug Delivery: A Review, Ali Mohammad Amani, Lobat Tayebi, Ehsan Vafa, Mohammad Javad Azizli, Milad Abbasi, Ahmad Vaez, Hesam Kamyab, Daniel Simancas-Racines, Shreeshivadasan Chelliapan Jan 2025

Biomedical Mxene-Polymer Nanocomposites: Advancing Photothermal Therapy, Antibacterial Action, And Smart Drug Delivery: A Review, Ali Mohammad Amani, Lobat Tayebi, Ehsan Vafa, Mohammad Javad Azizli, Milad Abbasi, Ahmad Vaez, Hesam Kamyab, Daniel Simancas-Racines, Shreeshivadasan Chelliapan

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

MXenes are hydrophilic, conductive, tunable, and biocompatible two-dimensional ceramic materials prepared by etching the 'A' layer from their precursor MAX phases. Although MXenes show exceptional promise in photothermal therapy, biosensing, and regenerative medicine, they face challenges such as oxidative instability in physiological environments, limited drug-loading capacity, and unpredictable immune responses. To address these limitations, MXene/polymer nanocomposites incorporating both synthetic polymers (e.g., polyethylene glycol (PEG), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), and polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA)) and natural biopolymers (e.g., cellulose nanofiber, gelatin, chitosan, hyaluronic acid, and soybean phospholipids) have been developed. These composites enhance functionality for biomedical applications such as photothermal cancer …