Doctoral Dissertations
Recent Submissions
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Connecting fields to connect models: A derivation of a viral master equation and the construction of transition rates
(2023-07-28)Viral infections have dynamics that are difficult to understand, but the choice of model can lend a helping hand to understanding an infection. The work here is a continuing effort to understand viral infections for the ... -
Modeling dwarf galaxies of the local volume with the semi-analytic model Galacticus
(2023-07-25)Dwarf galaxies are ubiquitous and extremely sensitive to various internal and external feedback forms. Thus, studying dwarfs in various environments is critical for understanding galaxy evolution. The best-studied dwarfs ... -
Survival or ‘splendid opportunities’?: A socio-economic and dialogical reading of Qohelet's Wisdom
(2023-03-31)Within this dissertation I intend to study how Qohelet’s discourse on wisdom is a product of larger socio-economic realities and webs of intertextuality. This project will attempt to work out these central questions: How ... -
"Survival is not an academic skill": A womanist reading of esther
(2022-11-09)Often, Esther is viewed as a story about the Jewish people surviving a foiled genocide, but I posit Esther contains other stories of survival. This project broadly examines non-Jewish people’s survival in Esther and ... -
Beyond innocence: fostering care for black children in the nineteenth-century and now
(2023-05-30)“Beyond Innocence” examines how white nineteenth-century literary representations of racialized innocence, seen in texts, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom Cabin (1852) and Jacob Abbott’s The Stories of Rainbow and ... -
Sport leadership to empower black women: a phenomenological exploration of inclusive leadership
(2023-05-18)The purpose of this study was to examine the organizational cultures of collegiate and professional athletics and the influence they have on Black women’s leadership opportunities. It also explored inclusive leadership and ... -
African American dementia caregivers’ information needs and information seeking behaviors
(2023-05-08)To help bridge the gap in health outcomes for African American dementia caregivers and their patients, this qualitative study explored the support and information needs and information seeking behaviors of African American ... -
Finding our balance: the effect of multiple recess on elementary children motor competence and executive functioning abilities
(2023-05-08)Unintentional Falls is the second leading cause of nonfatal injuries in the United States. (U.S.). Sedentary behaviors are at an all-time high in schools leading to children not engaging in enough physical activity throughout ... -
The (virtual) mentoring experience: undergraduate students support of K-12 students’ inquiry practices
(2023-05-04)This mixed methods research study investigates the experience of undergraduate students and K-12 students while participating in a semester-long virtual mentoring experience of a scientific research project to support the ... -
In their own words: foreign language teacher trainers’ narratives
(2023-05-04)The purpose of this study is to capture the stories of foreign language teacher educators and examine their professional paths, which will provide a more complete perspective and understanding of the field of foreign ... -
Tracing discourses of decolonial masculinities in African diasporic male writing of the long nineteenth century
(2023-05-04)The first concern of this study is to trace the evolution of the discourse that framed Black male identity in quite static, monolithic, racialized terms during the long nineteenth century. The second aims to identify the ... -
Florence Price, underrepresented composer no longer: an analysis of her Symphony in D Minor
(2023-05-04)The 2009 discovery of a substantial collection of manuscripts and other documents belonging to the composer Florence Price led to a renewal of interest in her music. One of the discovered manuscripts was of her Symphony ... -
Evaluating different trial and training designs in computerized foreign-language vocabulary instruction
(2023-05-04)The present study sought to evaluate trial designs and training designs that are commonly used in popular commercially available computer-assisted language-learning (CALL) programs. The first two experiments (Experiment ... -
Exploring chronic sleep loss and typical American-style diet as risk factors for Alzheimer's disease
(2023-05-04)Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, currently afflicting over 44 million people worldwide. This number is projected to increase significantly in the coming years, yet much about the disease’s etiology ... -
A trauma-informed model of care in Texas juvenile justice facilities: evaluation and implications
(2023-05-04)This study evaluated whether experiencing a trauma-informed model of care within a juvenile justice (JJ) setting predicted behavioral noncompliance within secure, residential facilities. Based on Bath’s Pillars of TraumaWise ... -
A new approach to enhance signal-background-ratio by smart pulse manipulation and time-gated detection: breaking the limit of DNA detection
(2023-05-04)Practical applications of optical biomedical imaging/diagnostics have been rapidly growing, stimulated by the promise of supreme sensitivity. Fluorescence detection has reached the ultimate sensitivity level of a single ... -
Discriminative contrast and the role of category organization on category learning
(2023-05-04)Learning to classify information into concepts and categories is an essential component to educational success. However, learning to correctly classify examples into a given category can be challenging, particularly when ... -
Following the trace: exploring teachers' study of the currere writing process, teachers' views of students, and teacher collective memory of the data meeting process
(2023-05-04)The purpose of this qualitative research study is to examine the effect of teachers’ study of the Currere Writing Process on teachers’ views of students and teachers’ collective memory of the data meeting process. The ... -
Queer/ing intimacies: radical love and friendship in Chicana feminist literature
(2023-05-01)Queer/ing Intimacies: Radical Love and Friendship in Chicana Feminist Literature challenges colonial and heteropatriarchal conceptions of intimacy that limit our capacity to fully understand ourselves and each other. While ... -
Black storytelling in southside Funky Town, Texas: from the 76104 zip code to the life and legacy work of Atatiana Carr-Jefferson as a mattering of Black life
(2023-05-01)My project situates the rhetorical and compositional dimensions of Black Storytelling among members from the historically and predominately African American neighborhoods in the 76104 zip code in Fort Worth, Texas, along ...