Digital Commons Network^™

Redefining Rural: A Strengths-Based Framework For Enhancing Educational Policy And Practice, Dawn A. Rowe, Michele A. Schutz, Hilary E. Travers, Jon Borland

The Rural Educator

The lack of a consistent definition of “rural” in education research and policy limits equitable decision making and resource allocation for rural schools. This exploratory study used a Policy Delphi approach to elicit expert and practitioner perspectives on how rural can be conceptualized through the rural cultural wealth framework. Twenty participants across 13 states identified and refined factors shaping educational decision making in rural contexts. Results revealed strong agreement that socioeconomic status, rural culture, and community engagement are central to defining rurality. Participants’ preferred definitions emphasized familial, social, and aspirational capital, highlighting how community cohesion and resilience shape educational opportunities. …

Barriers And Solutions To Effective Mental Health Services In Rural Schools: A Delphi Study, Rawn Boulden, Anna Simmons

The Rural Educator

In response to a gap in the literature, this study examined barriers and solutions to effective school-based mental health services and supports in schools. Using a Delphi methodology with a panel of 30 rural educators (i.e., school counselors, teachers, and administrators), the study identified 126 consensus statements across multiple domains. Findings highlight systemic challenges such as workforce shortages, stigma, limited access to services, and structural inequities. Participants also proposed actionable strategies, including expanding school-based mental health staffing, fostering community partnerships, and integrating social-emotional learning into classroom practices. These results offer practical, research-informed guidance for strengthening mental health infrastructure in rural …

Resourcefulness, Ingenuity, And Community Strengths In Meeting Rural Youth Mental Health Needs: A Multiple Case Study, Aaron Leo, Jessie Tobin, Paul Guay, Kristen Campbell Wilcox

The Rural Educator

This study investigated how 133 educators in six rural schools experience and address youth mental health challenges and the adaptations they use to meet students’ needs. Interview and focus group data were examined through the lens of rural community wealth to draw attention to the ways educators support their students and the resources on which they draw in their efforts. Findings illustrate that rural educators shift to providing as many services to students as possible on their school campuses; increase the capacity of staff members to address students’ mental health through targeted professional development and training; and integrate social-emotional learning …

Challenges And Opportunities In Rural Education: The Case Of La Araucanía, Chile, Katerin Arias-Ortega, Viviana Villarroel

The Rural Educator

The article reports on the challenges that rural education has been facing in La Araucanía, Chile, from the perspective of Mapuche parents. The study’s methodology was qualitative and involved Mapuche families who sent their children to rural, single-teacher schools located in an Indigenous context. The findings indicate that Mapuche mothers perceive the education that their children receive in rural schools to be of lower academic quality. Furthermore, they acknowledge that rural education receives less economic support than education in urban settings, which creates a disadvantage for Indigenous and peasant children. This disparity limits their ability to acquire the same resources …

Who Gets Closed? Twenty Years Of Access-Restricting School Closures In Arkansas, Mara C. Tieken, Christine Murray

The Rural Educator

Many states are facing dropping enrollments, budget shortfalls, and pandemic-era learning loss, and, looking to maximize efficiency and strengthen academics, they are considering district consolidation and school closure. Yet school closure is a highly contested issue, and research suggests that closure can harm students and communities. This study used discrete time survival analysis to investigate the demographic and institutional factors associated with access-restricting closures of rural schools in Arkansas from the 2003–2004 school year to the 2022–2023 school year. We looked at these closures—nearly all of them preceded by district consolidation due to under-enrollment or academic or fiscal sanction—to explore …

Updates To The Definition Of Rural, Daniel Showalter

The Rural Educator

First appearing in “Why Rural Matters 2025: People, Place, and Possibility,” this essay explains how changes to U.S. Census Bureau definitions of “urban” after the 2020 census have significantly reshaped which school districts and schools are classified as rural. These updates—such as raising population thresholds and redefining density—have led to many districts shifting classifications, with far more becoming newly rural than leaving that category. As a result, rural student counts have increased substantially, although this increase mostly reflects reclassification rather than demographic change. These shifts have important implications for funding, research, and policy decisions related to rural education.

Deep Analysis In Excel Without Vba: Creating Transparent Portable User-Defined Functions With =Lambda, Tom Arnold, Timothy Falcon Crack

Finance Faculty Publications

Please note that this paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Wealth Management and hence only the abstract is currently available here.

You can exploit your current knowledge of Excel's formula language to build customized Excel functions. These user-defined functions are so fast and transparent that they may be useful for validating AI answers or replacing them altogether. You can now use loops that previously required VBA or JavaScript. The functions use Excel's new =LAMBDA and =MAKEARRAY functions. You can assign personalized names to functions and their input variables, and they are portable between Workbooks. We present …

His Brother's Keeper: Examining The Relationship Between Social Support Within The Black Barbershop And Help-Seeking Behaviors Among African American Men, Diarra Jana'e Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This study sought to examine the role the Black barbershop environment may play in lessening the gap between mental-health stigma and help-seeking behaviors among African American men. It is the first to examine the impact of peer-support received in the Black barbershop in comparison to a traditional medical setting on referral follow-through among this demographic. Black men experience significant physical health disparities in comparison to all other race-sex demographic groups in the United States. These health disparities are often due to systemic inequities like lack of access to health care, cost of care, and a lack of insurance. With much …

Neighborhood Investment Fellows Connect Classroom Learning With Housing Challenges In Bloomington, Emily Bollinger

Press Releases 2020-2029

No abstract provided.

Iwu Associates Connect Community And Campus, Emily Bollinger

Press Releases 2020-2029

No abstract provided.

Contextualized Classroom Management For Local Philippine Higher Education: A Faculty-Driven Framework, Jestoni Pueblos Babia

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

Higher education classroom management is now recognized as an essential policy and pedagogical issue, especially in the Philippines, where local universities serve the diverse needs of Generation Z students. Participatory Action Research with 50 faculty members from a local university supports this study in developing a faculty-driven classroom management framework. Guided by Bandura's social learning theory, this framework emphasizes student involvement, restorative discipline, inclusion, digital integration, teacher leadership and institutional support. It draws on learning theory, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory, and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, among others. Results indicate that systems combining faculty creativity with consistent …

Effect Of Heat Treatments On The Corrosion Resistance Of A Trip Steel And Its Evaluation By Non-Destructive Testing, Karla Ivette Vega-Nava, Ariosto Medina-Flores, Marco Antonio Espinosa-Medina, José Sergio Pacheco-Cedeño, Héctor Guillermo Carreón-Garcidueñas, Francisco Fernando Curiel-López, Jose Jaime Taha-Tijerina

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The development of advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) for the automotive industry requires optimizing the balance between mechanical properties and durability in aggressive environments. This study investigates the effects of two heat treatment routes on the microstructure and corrosion resistance of a transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) steel (Fe-0.2C-1.75Mn-0.5Si-1Al). Route A includes a full austenitizing step at 1000 °C prior to intercritical annealing, whereas Route B omits this step and begins directly with intercritical annealing at 800 °C. Microstructural characterization (SEM/XRD), electrochemical assays, and eddy current tests were employed. The results revealed that Route A yields a homogeneous microstructure with 12.7% retained austenite, …

Chuck Sheley (Cj-59) Interview, Chuck Sheley, Stan Collins

Smokejumper Oral Histories

This interview of Chuck Sheley (CJ-59) by Stan Collins (CJ-70) covers Sheley's experience as a smokejumper beginning in 1959, his time running a crew program for the United States Forest Service in northern California, and his work with the National Smokejumper Association (NSA). Sheley mentions several smokejumpers active from the 1950s through the 1970s, as well as individuals important to the development of the NSA.

The Development And Evaluation Of The Functional Analysis Screening Tool For Athletic Performance (Fast-Ap), Sharayah S. M. Tai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing focus of ABA within sports performance, however, there is a lack of standardized assessments to aid in the development of individualized programming for athletes that is based on the behavior-reinforcing effects to promote optimal athletic performance. The Functional Analysis Screening Tool for Athletic Performance (FAST-AP) is a 16-item questionnaire developed to identify environmental variables that influence athletic performance and identify strategies that can be used to improve motivation and performance of athletes. This allows for the development of function-based interventions and identifying individualized coaching strategies to improve motivation and increase athletic performance more consistently overtime. Study …

Efficient, Secure Learning And Resource Management For Wireless Networks, Jiahao Xue

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid advancement of wireless networks has enabled a wide range of applications such as federated learning (FL) and Internet of Things, with supporting technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID). However, resource management and security challenges in wireless networks remain insufficiently addressed for these representative applications. In this dissertation, we first investigate wireless resource management for FL, then study novel attack and defense mechanisms for RFID systems. Finally, we analyze the performance and security of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled next generation wireless networks.

First, we investigate the client assignment and bandwidth allocation problem for FL in a multi-provider wireless setting. Unlike …

Building Trustworthy Information Systems: A Unified Framework For Comparative Risk Detection, Parisa Momeni

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Risk detection in large scale information systems increasingly depends on heterogeneous data generatedby both centralized and distributed ecosystems. While centralized systems provide curated and validated reports, distributed environments produce large-scale and real-time observational evidence. Existing computational approaches analyze these ecosystems in isolation, limiting systematic comparison of risk repre-sentations across heterogeneous sources.

This dissertation presents a unified computational framework for comparative risk detection across centralized and distributed information systems. The framework provides a domain independent methodology for transforming heterogeneous risk reporting data into comparable multidimensional representations. To enable interpretable comparison of heterogeneous risk distributions, this work introduces the Geometric Overlap Score …

Seeing Around Corners: An Indirect Light Transport Decomposition Framework For Fusing Physics And Learned Priors, Fadlullah Raji

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging, or seeing around corners, is the ability to recover information about objects hidden from direct view and remains one of the most compelling challenges in computational imaging. Existing approaches fall broadly into two categories: active and passive. Active time-resolved methods achieve impressive performance but require specialized pulsed laser hardware and ultrafast detectors, making them expensive and limited by slow measurement acquisition. Passive NLOS methods, which instead exploit the subtle soft shadows (penumbrae) cast by a hidden scene onto a visible matte surface, have recently emerged as a practical alternative. However, existing passive approaches are largely limited to …

Aligning Perspectives: Exploring Parent-Youth Agreement On Well-Being And The Impact Of Positive Psychology On Communication & Relationship Habits, Daijah N. Hines

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As research calls for best practices in assessment of psychological constructs from multiple informants, more information is needed for secondary reports of subjective experiences such as perceptions of life satisfaction. Adolescence is a vital period for intervention and assessment supports to promote well-being, yet there is a gap in the research on how to interpret multi-informant data for mental health constructs such as subjective well-being especially within this population. Research has shown support for and validated the use of parents/caregivers as secondary informants (Dew & Huebner, 1994; Hines et al., 2023; Shoshani & Slone, 2017) yet there is still vague …

Language Models For Oncology Clinical Text: How Model Architecture And Data Strategies Shape Tumor Phenotype Extraction And Disease Progression Detection, Thanh Duong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid growth of electronic health records (EHRs) has created new opportunities to apply machine learning to clinical data.However, a large portion of important clinical information is still stored in unstructured text, such as pathology reports, radiology reports, and longitudinal clinical notes.These documents contain key details about tumor characteristics, diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes.Extracting structured and useful information from this text is challenging due to complex medical language, varied document formats, and the need to combine information across multiple reports over time.This dissertation studies how language models can be designed and adapted to better extract and use oncology-specific information from …

House Sparrow Invasion Success Across Ecological, Immunological, And Molecular Scales, Kailey Marie Mccain

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Biological invasions offer natural experiments for studying how organisms cope with ecological novelty. Although invasion success is often attributed to enemy release, introduced organisms do not enter enemy-free environments. Instead, they enter heterogeneous landscapes in which some familiar enemies are absent, others remain, and entirely novel enemies may be encountered. The question, then, is how invaders (hereafter non-natives) are poised to respond to these threats? This dissertation examines whether successful invasions in house sparrows (Passer domesticus) is associated with shifts in pathogen exposure, immune dynamics in blood, gut physiology, and gene co-expression network structure.

Chapter 1 is at the population/ecological …

Mapping Seafloor Habitats And Characterizing Demersal Reef Fish Communities On The West Florida Shelf Across Multiple Spatial Scales Using Multibeam Sonar And Underwater Video, Alexander R. Ilich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the role of spatial scale in deriving seafloor terrain attributes, modeling benthic habitat, and analyzing ecological patterns of the demersal reef fish communities on the West Florida Shelf (WFS), with implications for improving predictive habitat mapping and understanding fish-environment relationships. Spatial scale plays a central role in benthic habitat mapping and ecological inference, influencing how terrain attributes are derived, how habitats are modeled, and how ecological responses are manifested. This work integrates multiscale terrain analysis, acoustic remote sensing, and community ecology to evaluate how spatial scale influences both physical habitat representation and ecological analysis.

Chapter …

Association Of Social Isolation, Loneliness, Social Strain And Support With Cancer Onset, And Frailty And All-Cause Mortality In People With Cancer, Joanne Elayoubi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is the second leading cause of death both in the United States and globally and for individuals over sixty-five. In 2026, approximately 2,114,850 new cancer cases are projected to emerge according to the National Center for Health Statistics (Siegel et al., 2026). Cancer incidence is increasing, making older adults sixty-five and older at risk of frailty and mortality following cancer. Although social isolation, loneliness, lack of social support, and social strain have been found to be risk factors for poor health and mortality, it is not clear the extent to which social relationships are associated with incident cancer, and …

Factors Influencing Attitudes Toward Transgender Army National Guard Personnel And Policy, Michelle Lyn Branch

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Call Center Leaders’ Communication Strategies To Increase Employee Productivity, Tracie Okema Stenson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Internal Neutrosophic Spiral Dynamics: Connecting Human Neutrosophic Evolution With The Law Of Internal Breakdown Of Dynamic Systems, Florentin Smarandache, Andrusa R. Vatuiu

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

No abstract provided.

Neutrosophic Estimation Of Population Variance Using Two Auxiliary Variables In Simple Random Sampling, Anoop Kumar, Priya Priya, Vrijesh Tripathi, Ravinder Singh

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

No abstract provided.

Structured Neutrosophic Sets With Entropy-Derived Indeterminacy: Injectivity, Stability, And Aggregation Guarantees For Variability-Sensitive Mcdm, Janak Raj Amit Kumar, I. Paulraj Jayasimman

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

No abstract provided.

Pythagorean Neutrosophic Dematel And Ahp For Water Security Evaluation, Noor Azzah Awang, Norliana Mohd Najib, Norsyahida Zulkifli, Muhammad Saeed, Lazim Abdullah

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

No abstract provided.

Neutrosophic Approaches In Deep Learning For Ambiguous Medical Image Analysis: A Systematic Review Toward Wound Assessment, Zakaria Ahmed, Reda Ahmed

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

No abstract provided.

Community Perceptions And Hospital Selection In Depok: A Comparative Study Of Rsud Anugerah Sehat Afiat And Competitors Based On The 5a Framework, Iva Nur Faridah, Wahyu Sulistiadi

Jurnal ARSI : Administrasi Rumah Sakit Indonesia

RSUD Anugerah Sehat Afiat (ASA) Depok faces challenges in enhancing service utilization and competitiveness as a public hospital in the increasingly competitive healthcare environment of eastern Depok City. This study aimed to identify factors influencing community preferences in hospital selection and to determine appropriate positioning strategies for RSUD ASA. A mixed-methods case study design was employed. Quantitative data were collected from 132 respondents aged over 25 years who had visited four hospitals included in the study, using structured questionnaires. Qualitative data were obtained through in-depth interviews with eight key informants representing RSUD ASA management. Data analysis was based on five …