Theses and Dissertations

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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion within the Academy –Rhetoric or Impact? Experiences of Black Women DEI Leaders Post the 2020 Racial Reckoning
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Hall, Naima; Johnson, Jennifer M., 1970-; DuCette, Joseph P.; Davis, James Earl, 1960-; Brooks, Wanda M., 1969-
Black women leaders in higher education experience unique yet nuanced experiences within the academy that shape their access to leadership, impact their leadership journey, and influence perceptions of belonging. For Black women who hold the role of DEI leader at a predominately white institution (PWI) post the country’s 2020 racial reckoning and at the height of the influx of anti-DEI legislation; these lived experiences are amplified. As such, these amplified experiences create a unique phenomenon that is specific to the Black woman DEI leader serving at a PWI. The research question guiding this study is: have Black women DEI leaders navigating career progression in a PWI, post the social movement for racial justice, experienced an increased sense of belonging? To answer this question, this study focused on the lived experiences of discrimination, sense of belonging, and perceptions of institutional climate of this population amidst the backdrop of a contentious sociopolitical DEI climate and at the height of the anti-DEI legislation. This study collected data from 20 Black women higher education administrators who completed a Climate Survey and semi-structured interviews of three senior level DEI leaders. The Climate Survey was analyzed through frequency counts of Likert scaled questions and a deductive analysis of open-ended survey questions. Interview data were analyzed via a deductive and inductive coding scheme. The conceptual framework guiding this study consisted of intersectionality theory, Critical Race Theory, stereotype threat, and an emergent belonging framework which served as the interpretative lens for this study. Data analysis of this study rendered the quantitative data demonstrating that the majority of respondent continued to experience barred access to career advancement and identity discrimination post America’s 2020 racial reckoning. The themes and subthemes of the Climate Survey were: (1) Where Do I Belong: Perceptions of Climate, (1a) It’s Baked In: Institutional Culture and Norms, (1b) Code Switching a Necessity for Survival: Interactions with Others in Academia and (1c) The Struggle is Real: Frustration and Exhaustion All at the Same Time. Subsequent data analysis of the semi-structured interviews rendered the following themes: (1) Don’t “Dis” Me: Discrimination, Disrespect and Disregard and (2) Is it Just Me?: Hyper-Visibility and Invisibility. The study emphasized the relevance of the existing literature and research acknowledging that Black women administrators navigate leadership in predominately white spaces in higher education by normalizing the effects of systems within PWIs that perpetrate exclusion through resiliency. While these women describe challenging circumstances within their own lived experiences navigating their careers within the confines of a PWI, each of them, through resolute persistence, have managed to till the soil for a foundation to increase the representation of Black women within PWIs.
Harm Reduction in Opioid Use Disorder: The Role of Safe Injection Facilities
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Deshpande, Janhavee; Spivak, Stephanie
The opioid epidemic has reached critical levels in American society. By affecting all demographics and socioeconomic levels, it has led to unprecedented numbers of overdoses and deaths while simultaneously burdening our healthcare system. Current policy towards opioid use disorder centers on medication and rehabilitation with the ultimate goal of long-term recovery and abstinence. However, as more studies have emerged over the past few years regarding substance use disorders, the idea of harm reduction as a potential method to mitigate the negative effects of opioid use disorder has grown from the public health sector and addiction advocates. Harm reduction policies encompass many avenues that include syringe exchange programs, widely available naloxone prescriptions, and more recently, the creation of safe injection facilities (SIFs). SIFs are a place for supervised and sterile injection use under the supervision of medical professionals. They have been growing in number in the international community and have shown promise in the United States as a means of providing healthcare to people with substance use disorders. This paper will demonstrate the efficacy and need for SIFs in the opioid use community of America.
The Lady Vanishes: Tracing an Infrastructure of Acousmatic Feminine Labor
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Dawson, Katherine; Kitch, Carolyn L.; Mindich, David T. Z., 1963-; Levitt, Laura, 1960-; Creech, Brian; Fleeger, Jennifer
This dissertation argues that the current preponderance of femme-styled AI voiceassistants (AI VAs) represents part of an evolving communication infrastructure which reifies women’s voices as at once unique and universal in their helpfulness, while also normalizing the invisibility and immateriality of their labor. To trace the evolution of this gendered, sonic infrastructure, I conduct a critical discourse analysis with attention to four key historical moments: the dawn of telephony and the concomitant American “voice culture” obsession; the reign of the Bell Telephone Company, whose women operators were trained to deliver “the voice with a smile”; the increased automation and technological displacement of live operator service; and finally, the modern zeitgeist of popular AI voices. In each era, I examine popular and official discourses surrounding the role of women’s voices in telecommunications labor with special attention to corporate communications from the AT&T Archive & History Center in Warren, NJ. Throughout this analysis, I turn to Susan Leigh Star’s multi-dimensional definition of infrastructure to consider how such discourses act as sites of “encoding and standardizing” which naturalize women’s voices as “ready-to-hand” features of modern communication and information systems. Moreover, I ask: when feminine voices become independent of laboring bodies, where is power?
Integrating Data Analytics and Computation Programming for Enhanced Material Design in High Performance Thin-Film Optical Coatings
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Anthony, Taryn Patrice; Jansen Varnum, Susan; Zdilla, Michael J., 1978-; Wunder, Stephanie L.; Sanders, Robert W.
Optical thin films have been applied to different substrates to impart specific optical, physical, and chemical properties for military, avionic and medical applications. High performance optical thin films identify variables, like baseline spectra range behavior, reflectance, transmission, or film thickness to create the end use film on a specific substrate. Deposition parameters are often optimized incrementally, resulting in current failure rates identification of the need for a rational design mechanism.The aim of this project is to identify correlations and/or causations between collected technical information and computer programable predictive modelling of chemical, physical, and optical properties associated with the film and substrate, ultimately improving the pass rate and therefore increasing production quality and capacity in the manufacturing facility. The development of this methodology will provide a unique process to identify technical information and incorporate programing/modelling to inform development of highly specialized thin films for end use in military, avionic, and medical applications. Upon method creation, films will be developed more efficiently, decreasing cost, time, and resources in comparison to the current film creation process. Additionally, correlation and causation relationships identify the underlying physical or chemical interactions at the molecular level which control the bulk film properties. Ultimately, this project identifies not only a material specific process and improvement for one material in the manufacturing facility, but it identifies a statistical method to enhance manufacturer’s capabilities of meeting highly specialized end-use products for their customers.
STUDY ON FINANCIAL SUPPORT EFFICIENCY FOR COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION BY LAB-GROWN DIAMOND INDUSTRY CLUSTERS IN CHINA
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Fang, Haijiang; Bakshi, Gurdip; Gao Bakshi, Xiaohui; Wang, Wei
The use of jewelry and jade and the jade culture has a history of thousands of years in China. They were regarded as exclusive luxuries only available to nobles in ancient times. Luxurious jewelry and jade represented by diamonds have entered the homes of ordinary people since the 1980s as a result of the development of the national economy and the growth of people's income after the continuous implementation of China's reform and opening up. The past studies by Chinese researchers on the diamond industry paid more attention to consumption, processing technology, policy support, and marketing and seldom identified problems in the development of the diamond industry from the perspective of industrial development. Little literature deals with the future demand and development prospects of the diamond industry from the perspective of industry clusters. Moreover, the collaborative innovation activities within industry clusters cannot thrive without financial support. While academia has made some research achievements in this area, a study in depth on the current status and the improvement strategies about the financial efficiency for collaborative innovation by industry clusters has not been conducted yet.Based on a review of the related literatures and theories about the collaborative innovation by industry clusters and financial support, this study conducts empirical analysis on listed companies of the lab-growth diamond industry cluster in Henan, China, with the DEA model that measures the relative efficiency of input, showing that the efficiency of the sample cluster companies has kept improving in general from 2017 to 2021, and the level of collaborative innovation in the cluster was also increasing. However, there is a large room for improvement in terms of the absolute value of efficiency. A typical example is their pure technical efficiency fell behind the improvement in the scale of efficiency. Accordingly, the dissertation proposes appropriate measures and recommendations aimed at accelerating the improvement of financial service system, which is of practical significance for facilitating the dual progress and development of both the industry clusters and the financial sector. The financial needs of industry clusters are different from those of individual enterprise. To promote effective collaborative innovation in industry clusters, it is necessary to provide innovative and targeted financial service products and enhance the quality of financial services for collaborative innovation in industry clusters with various development stages and development focuses.
Semi-Supervised Deep Learning Frameworks for Transmission-Scale Load Disaggregation and Behind-the-meter Solar Prediction
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Zhao, Zhenyu; Du, Liang; Biswas, Saroj; Wang, Han; Fan, Xiaoyuan
While bringing environmental benefits, the proliferation of renewable energy resources poses challenges to transmission system operators due to their volatility nature. Thus, it is essential for Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs) to accurately extract load profiles for nodes with substantial BTM solar injection. This dissertation presents novel transmission-scale load disaggregation and BTM solar prediction frameworks, addressing lack of visibility for and enhancing situational awareness for transmission operators. Unlike distribution-level BTM solar generation which has ground-truth data, transmission-level BTM solar generation lacks such visibility. To address aforementioned challenge, spatial and temporal relationships between nodal and zonal load profiles are proposed and validated. Validated relations and used to disaggregate transmission-level load profiles. A proxy solar profile within each zone is utilized to segment the dataset. Finally, a semi-supervised model is developed to disaggregate nodal load demand profiles. To evaluate the outcomes without ground truth, cross-zero points and various distance matrices, including Wasserstein, symmetrical KL, and area difference metrics are adopted. Disaggregation models utilizing Linear, bi-linear, and non-linear features are validated with real world data from PJM Interconnection, respectively. Based on disaggregation framework, a self-supervised, transmission-scale BTM solar prediction framework is developed based on Timeseries Dense Encoder (TiDE) algorithm, emphasizing low computational costs and high accuracy for large datasets. This work presents a comprehensive, bottom-up framework for disaggregating transmission-scale load profiles and predicting BTM solar generation.
Experimental and Finite Element Evaluation of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Vafadar, Sheida; Darvish, Kurosh; Ward, Sara Jane; Sahraei, Elham; Spence, Andrew J.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major health concern, with mild TBI (mTBI) being the most common type and frequently linked to long-term neurological issues. Studying mTBI is essential to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies for affected individuals.This dissertation explores the biomechanical and biological impacts of mTBI induced by blast exposure and rapid acceleration, focusing on both experimental replication and finite element (FE) modeling. In experimental studies, using a custom-built shock tube, this study replicated blast-induced TBI (bTBI) in rats, examining the effects of single and multiple blast exposures on behavioral and histological outcomes. Behavioral evaluations using Rotarod and Open Field tasks, along with histological markers (GFAP, Iba-1, and tau protein), demonstrated that multiple blast exposures resulted in more severe motor deficits and neuroinflammatory responses than single exposures. This highlights cumulative injury risks. To address repetitive rmTBI as observed in sports and military settings, a novel Whole Body Deceleration (WBD) model, based on rapid acceleration-deceleration, was introduced. This model induced rmTBI in rats, with motor function and anxiety-like behaviors assessed alongside histological analyses of microglial activation (Iba-1) and inflammatory markers (TLR4 and TNF-α). Results indicated increased microglial activation and TLR4 expression, with notable motor impairments in the acute post-injury phase (7 days). These findings underscore the complex neuroinflammatory responses associated with rmTBI. Additionally, the long-term (21 days) effects of WBD and the impact of different injury repetition patterns were evaluated. The Novel Object Recognition task was incorporated alongside previous behavioral assessment tools to assess memory function. Over the long term, WBD led to increased impulsivity in rats, with repetition patterns influencing behavioral trends. However, no persistent memory deficits were observed over this period. Furthermore, we investigated O-1966 (CB2) as a therapeutic option for bTBI and both O-1966 and KLS for WBD. CB2 demonstrated a reduction in neuroinflammation following bTBI in the acute phase. KLS and CB2 showed no conclusive evidence of improving anxiety or memory deficits following WBD in the long term. This study developed a validated 3D FE model of a shock tube to simulate blast wave effects on a rat’s head, examining key parameters like peak overpressure and positive phase duration. The model effectively replicates blast conditions in the experiments, advancing our understanding of bTBI mechanisms. Lastly, a comparative biomechanical analysis was conducted between our blast-induced and acceleration-induced mTBI using FE simulations. Key metrics such as intracranial pressure, pressure impulse, von Mises stress, maximum principal strain, and stress power (time derivative of internal energy) revealed distinct injury patterns. The blast model centralized the energy, leading to higher shear stress and pressure, indicating a more diffuse and severe injury profile. Conversely, the acceleration model demonstrated a more symmetric distribution of energy, especially between Coup and Contrecoup regions, suggesting a localized injury effect.
What’s At Stake: Illuminating The Voices of Community Stakeholders Engaged in District Strategic Planning
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Cherfrere, Gernissia; Cucchiara, Maia Bloomfield; Shorr, Lori A.; Brooks, Wanda M., 1969-; Davis, James Earl, 1960-
Over the last few decades, the saliency of district strategic planning has increased with state mandates and federal implications, coupled with school districts and individual schools autonomously electing to engage in the planning process. Since the perspectives of community members and parents have often been marginalized in strategic planning scholarship, it is important to investigate the experiences of community stakeholders who participated in strategic planning. Using a single case study design, this dissertation investigated the nature of engagement of strategic planning participants who were community stakeholders at an urban school district. This study examined primary and secondary sources and involved 19 interviewees: twelve community members who participated in the planning process, five Rosewood residents, and two district leaders. The findings show that Rosewood Public School’s strategic planning was managed in such a way that community stakeholders were excluded from meaningful engagement. Though strategic planning participants initially felt welcomed, they were also relegated to specific sessions, given limited roles, and excluded from important decision-making opportunities. The findings make it clear that without adequate accountability or the willingness of district leaders to consistently include community perspectives, this urban school district's strategic planning process reinscribed dominant cultural practices and structures of power.
BEYOND LOCAL NEIGHBORHOODS: LEVERAGING INFORMATIVE NODES FOR IMPROVED GRAPH NEURAL NETWORKS PERFORMANCE
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Liang, Peiyu; He, Xubin; He, Xubin; Gao, Hongchang; Wang, Yu; Zhao, Zhigen
Many real-world datasets, such as those from social and scientific domains, can be represented as graphs, where entities are depicted as nodes and their relationships as edges. To analyze the properties of individual entities (node classification) or the community as a whole (graph classification), graph neural networks (GNNs) serve as a powerful tool. Most GNNs utilize a message-passing scheme to aggregate information from neighboring nodes. This localized aggregation allows the network to learn representations that incorporate the context of each node, thereby enhancing its ability to capture complex local structures and relationships. Despite their success, many GNNs heavily rely on local 1-hop neighborhood information and a stacked architecture of $K$ layers. This dependency can result in poor handling of long-range dependencies and lead to issues like information over-squashing. Consequently, there is a pressing need for advanced methodologies that can systematically aggregate more informative nodes beyond the default graph structure to achieve more accurate classification results. In this thesis, we highlight the challenges of information over-squashing and the limited capacity of existing GNNs to capture long-range dependencies, focusing on addressing these issues through innovative informative node selection and end-to-end learning strategy using three approaches. Our first approach, \textit{Two-view GNNs with adaptive view-wise structure learning strategy}, posits that more informative nodes should have proximal node representations within a graph structure constructed on such attributes. We reconstruct a new graph structure based on the proximity of node representations and simultaneously learn a graph object from both the newly constructed and default graph structures for relationship reasoning. Additionally, we employ an adaptive strategy that learns inter-structure relationships based on classifier performance. While this approach achieves more accurate classifications, it is still limited by relying on a single or two graph structures. Our second approach, \textit{Cauchy-smoothing GCN (CauchyGCN)}, utilizes the default graph structure but regards more informative nodes as those closely embedded in the embedding space. CauchyGCN develops a new layer-wise message-passing scheme that follows the properties of the Cauchy distribution, preserving smoothness between closely embedded nodes while penalizing distant 1-hop neighbors less severely. This approach shows competitive results compared to other advancements. From our first two approaches, we observe that (1) Understanding the graph requires learning from multiple perspectives, and informative nodes could reside beyond the default graph structure. (2) Preserving smoothness among informative nodes is beneficial for effective learning. Our third approach, \textit{Topological-induced Graph Transformer (TOPGT)}, defines the additional useful graph structures as topological structures and leverages a self-attention mechanism to assess the importance of closely embedded nodes. This approach achieves state-of-the-art performance compared to existing methods in the domain. Finally, we summarize our contributions through the three approaches that address the challenges that this thesis highlights. Additionally, I discuss potential future work to explore and utilize informative node information beyond local neighborhoods, aiming to develop large pre-trained GNNs capable of tackling various downstream tasks across different domains.
CHARACTERIZING THREAT’S INFLUENCE IN POST-ENCODING REACTIVATION AND ITS DOWNSTREAM CONSEQUENCES ON MEMORY REPRESENTATIONS
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Tanriverdi, Büşra; Chein, Jason M.; Olson, Ingrid R.; Chein, Jason M.; Olson, Ingrid R.; Murty, Vishnu P.; Helion, Chelsea; Cowan, Emily T.; Ritchey, Maureen
Threatening events influence memory systems in complex ways. While it was once believed that emotion enhanced all aspects of memory, recent evidence suggests that it improves recall of emotional central features, but not neutral peripheral details (Payne & Kensinger, 2011). Other studies show that emotion can enhance context, retroactively benefiting related neutral events over time (Dunsmoor et al., 2015). Notably, both effects emerge after sleep, indicating a role for memory consolidation. Recently, Cowan et al. (2021) proposed that consolidation not only strengthens salient information but also adaptively transforms memories via semanticization and integration. In this dissertation, we adopt this adaptive memory framework to investigate behavioral and neural markers of threat memory transformation. First, using free recall changes over a week as a behavioral measure of memory transformation, we show that higher subjective arousal predicts greater semanticization, with fewer episodic details retained over time. Next, functional connectivity analyses reveal a division between anterior and posterior hippocampus: the posterior hippocampus, in conjunction with the basolateral amygdala and sensory cortex during encoding, is linked to less memory semanticization, while the anterior hippocampus, coupled with the lateral occipital cortex and precuneus during post-encoding, predicts greater semanticization. Moreover, representational similarity analyses reveal that long-term memory reinstatement is strongest in the precuneus, resembling early encoding patterns, with both hippocampal regions shifting over time towards gist representations, albeit with varying granularity. Finally, we report a negative relationship between neural reinstatement in the lateral occipital cortex and memory semanticization, suggesting that detailed cortical representations help preserve event details over time. These findings support the adaptive memory model (Cowan et al., 2021), emphasizing the dynamic roles of the hippocampus, amygdala and cortex in threat memory transformation.
Impact of the Development of Wealth Management on China's Financial Ecology
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-09) Liu, Shuying; Gao Bakshi, Xiaohui; Bakshi, Gurdip; Krishnan, Jayanthi
This paper is mainly based on the rapid economic development that China has achieved in the 40 years of reform and opening up since 1978, and the wealth owned by Chinese residents is getting better and better. Because Deng Xiaoping once put forward the initiative of letting some capable people get rich first, the wealth of some Chinese has increased exponentially. With the increasing wealth of residents, and the influence of the financial industry and wealth management concepts, the main body of financial awareness of Chinese residents has awakened, and the demand for wealth management professionalism is increasing. China is now the world's second largest wealth management market. Based on this, this paper comprehensively analyzes the formation and development process of the wealth management market with bank wealth management as the main body from the perspective of the domestic macro environment and domestic demand. Including securities company asset management, public funds, private equity funds, custodial asset management and trust industries. At the same time, the development and prospects of China's wealth management industry market are analyzed. This paper focuses on the analysis of the impact of the development of wealth management on the financial industry, and discusses the impact of the development of bank wealth management, private equity, public offering, fund custody, securities company asset management, insurance and trust on the financial industry. This paper verifies the above argument through the actual analysis of the impact of the development of the wealth management market on the operation of financial institutions. The paper concludes with: 1.Strengthening the construction of the evolution system of the financial ecosystem plays an important role in accelerating the construction of the basic economy and improving the level of the regional economy. 2. It is an important measure to promote economic development to improve the policy arrangements for the innovation mechanism of the financial ecosystem, improve the reform of the financial mechanism, and optimize the financial ecological structure. 3. It is of great significance for the development of wealth management to improve the construction of a soft environment for the evolution of the financial ecosystem, accelerate the development of financial intermediaries, and improve the financial level.
FROM MEMES TO MOVEMENTS: THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN THE GAMESTOP PHENOMENON AND PERIPHERAL SUBREDDITS IN DIGITAL FINANCIAL MOBILIZATION
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Han, Jing; Iliadis, Andrew; Baym, Geoffrey; Shi, Justin Y.; Omizo, Ryan
Reddit studies have examined community formation and collective identity on individualsubreddits, analyzed the migration of users among subreddits, or provided activity metrics across the platform. Fewer studies have examined Reddit affordances on sub-community and topical levels. In my dissertation, I introduce the concept of ‘peripheral subreddits’, which are offshoots of more prominent subreddits, by studying peripheral subreddits of the GameStop movement, which initially occurred on r/WallStreetBets (r/Superstonk, r/GME, r/GMEJungle, and r/DDintoGME). I argue that analyzing the communicative activity occurring on peripheral subreddits may help communication scholars understand the growth of emerging movements that are anonymously social and ‘digital-first’. Specifically, I examine peripheral subreddits by focusing on three characteristics: topic inheritance (the provision of content themes from a more popular root subreddit), topic similarity (the shared interests among peripheral subreddits), and topic connectivity (the explicit or implicit associations among peripheral subreddits in the form of shared dialogue, activities, beliefs, or sentiments). I use computational methods such as topic modeling and sentiment analysis to analyze user activity and posts in these peripheral subreddits. Further, following the literature on digitally mediated stock market communities, I examine whether these peripheral subreddits engage in communicative processes such as aestheticization, virtualization, and de-realization, and reflexivities such as performativity, transactionality, and gamification.
FEELINGS WORK: AN EXAMINATION OF EMOTIONAL LABOR IN BLACK AMERICAN WOMEN’S LITERATURE
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Sakellarides, Theodora H; Williams, Roland Leander; Henry, Katherine, 1956-; Léger, Natalie M.
The term “emotional labor” has gained considerable recognition as a means to articulate a complex series of responsibilities that women assume both within and outside the marketplace. Despite increasing attention from scholars and activists, there has yet to be an examination of how emotional labor is represented in literature. My dissertation seeks to address this gap in the scholarship by exploring what I contend is a profound concern with emotional labor in works written by Black American women. While early conceptions of the term are tied to gender-based inequalities, I shift focus to consider the overlooked racial dimensions of the phenomenon. Through close readings of notable texts from the tradition, I demonstrate that Black American women writers have specifically focused on emotional labor in the context of formal and informal racial justice efforts. This labor predominantly takes the form of instruction and storytelling that is carefully curated for white Americans. I argue that the Black American women’s literature cited in this doctoral study continually expresses a duty to engage in these two tasks, in the service of greater racial equality in the United States. Adopting an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, I analyze a range of memoirs, essays, fiction, and poetry to showcase how Black American women writers utilize diverse literary forms to interrogate the emotional labor they undertake. Ultimately, I assert that an examination of this rich literary tradition may reveal that the writings of Black American women offer valuable insights into the racialization of emotional labor, as well as deepen our understanding of their unique historical role in the enduring struggle for racial equalityin the United States.
FUERZA EN NUMEROS: LATINO REPRESENTION ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES AND THE EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES OF LATINO STUDENTS
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Arteta, Genesis; Klugman, Joshua; Goyette, Kimberly A.; Tesfai, Rebbeca; Clydesdale, Timothy T. (Timothy Thomas), 1965-
This study uses secondary data to explore the relationship between the percentage of Latinos enrolled in a postsecondary institution and two educational outcomes: graduating within six years and total amount in student loan debt. Research on the concentration of Latino students in higher education have mostly focused on Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). HSIs are accredited postsecondary institutions with a full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment of at least 25% Latino undergraduate students, of which at least 50% are low-income (Laden, 2001). This study takes a step back from the HSI designation (HSI vs non-HSI) and is instead centered on a prominent characteristic of an HSI: the percentage of Latinos enrolled in an institution. This study utilizes data from three different secondary data sources: the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002); the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS12/17); and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Both the ELS:2002 and the BPS 12/17 are merged separately with the IPEDS data ultimately producing two student-level datasets, equipped with institution-level information. Using this data, separate sets of regression analyses are conducted for each sample to assess the impact Latino enrollment at a postsecondary institution has on the probability of graduating within six years and the total amount of student loan debt. This study explores these associations with the notion that the mechanism through which an increase in percent Latino would benefit Latino students is through the facilitation of social inclusion and co-ethnic solidarity which may ground the student to the institution. However, it is conceivable that the structure of that solidarity and access to membership is not just a function of the size of the Latino population. This study finds it is not. We cannot conclusively confirm a positive association between the percentage of Latinos enrolled in a postsecondary institution and its effects on the educational outcomes of Latino students. However, Latinos continue to make up a large share of college students and regardless of recruitment efforts by postsecondary institutions, their participation in higher education is expected to increase. Therefore, attention should continue to be placed on what postsecondary institutions are doing to retain their Latino students.
The Cultural Broker: Babette Deutsch and Transatlantic Modernism
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Shields, Brian; Orvell, Miles; Henry, Katherine, 1956-; Osman, Jena; Hadas, Rachel
This dissertation explores the multifaceted contributions of Babette Deutsch, emphasizing her role as a cultural broker within the modernist tradition. Deutsch’s diverse oeuvre, spanning poetry, fiction, translation, and literary criticism, is re-evaluated through the lens of cultural brokerage, a concept rooted in anthropological discourse. The study delves into her impact on American literary modernism, her feminist literary contributions, and her pivotal role in facilitating transnational literary exchanges. By situating Deutsch within the frameworks of cultural mediation and linguistic interpretation, this research elucidates her efforts to challenge nationalist and instrumentalist assumptions in literature.The project establishes a theoretical foundation for analyzing Deutsch’s work, providing detailed analyses of her transnational poetry, feminist modernist narratives, innovative translation practices, and critical engagement with American literary production in the early to mid-twentieth century. Deutsch’s poetry is celebrated for its rich intertextuality and thematic diversity, addressing both personal and universal themes while reflecting her engagement with various cultural and literary traditions. Her translations are highlighted for their cultural impact and poetic qualities, positioning her as a key figure in enriching American literature with diverse voices. Her critical writings advocate for a cosmopolitan approach to literature, challenging restrictive definitions and promoting an inclusive vision of American identity. Deutsch’s legacy as a cultural broker is underscored by her ability to navigate between diverse cultural influences, thereby fostering cross-cultural dialogue and enriching American literary discourse. This dissertation not only reaffirms Deutsch’s significance in literary history but also proposes an expanded application of cultural brokerage as a theoretical framework for understanding transnational and multiethnic literary dynamics.
Citizenship and Belonging after the Constitutional Court Ruling 168-13: An Examination of the Black Fatigue among Dominican Youth of Haitian Descent in the Dominican Republic from 2015 through 2019
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Brice Pacheco, Dana; Stankiewicz, Damien, 1980-; Williams, Kimberly D.; Garcia-Sanchez, Inmaculada Ma. (Inmaculada Maria); Upton, J. Christopher; Estrella, Amarilys, 1984-
This dissertation examines how Dominicans of Haitian descent navigate their political situation from two perspectives: by becoming aware of their precarious legal status in Dominican Republic, and in how they obtain their legal documents or papeles with the assistance of third parties like the NGOs (Valdez 2014, Barlett et al 2011). I argue that the cyclical human rights violations, othering, and discriminatory experiences that Dominicans of Haitian descent have experienced in the past 15 years have exacerbated an eroded notion of the state and created a sense of Black Fatigue (Winters 2020) among the community. Primarily, as it pertains to the state being able to guarantee basic rights and providing an irreconcilable experience of citizenship for youth who were rendered stateless in their own country, and a defined experience of Black Fatigue that permeates their interactions both with non-governmental organizations and the state. I employ the framework of structural violence from Paul Farmer to contextualize how Black Fatigue has emerged among this community and discuss the ways in which Dominicans of Haitian descent have been disenfranchised as an extension of the abuses against Haitian immigrants in the country, and how this has extended to their understanding and experience of citizenship being born Dominicans and then rendered stateless. I examine the "sticky citizenship" process through which they were rendered foreigners in their own country by the Dominican government, and how they have thought and reevaluated their belonging through constructing narratives around their process of obtaining citizenship over the past five years. I used a mixed methods approach in which I collected data between 2015 and 2019, over 20 months (about one and a half years) total of fieldwork. During the academic year of 2018-2019 I lived in Santo Domingo, and most of the interviews and all the focus groups were conducted in that timeframe. I transcribed all the focus groups (over 25 hours of recordings, both in video and audio) and the interviews (totaling more than 30 hours over video and audio) and identified themes and threads among NGO representatives, Dominicans of Haitian descent, and the larger groups. Ultimately, my work poses that obtaining documents is far from solving the issues of this population which has come of age during a trying time, but that the issues of racism and discrimination that are at the core of the statelessness dispute could be better addressed through the work of some of the organizations and turned into sustainable development and empowerment for this community in the future.
AMERICAN MADNESS: THE FRONTIER IN THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, HERMAN MELVILLE, JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, WILLA CATHER, AND O.E. RØLVAAG
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Soderblom, Matthew; Orvell, Miles; Salazar, James B.; Henry, Katherine, 1956-
The theme of madness along the frontier developed in American novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Willa Cather, and O.E. Rølvaag rely on the frontier and the theme of madness to depict characters’ aberrant behaviors. Using these depictions of madness, I explore questions of religion, violence, gender, and ethnic identity to analyze the psychological impact of the frontier and its role in American literature. Melville and Hawthorne rely on ideas of isolation and the religious fervor of Puritanism to show the forms of madness that plague their characters along the frontier. Cooper focuses on isolationist aspects of madness. Thus, I argue constant movement, senseless violence, and clashes between settlers and the indigenous create a crucible for the creation of an American identity. Willa Cather’s works continue this trend with a focus on the welfare of female, immigrant, and potentially queer protagonists. Cather depicts madness as an inevitable part of Nebraska and frontier life, which is produced by the economic conditions of an industrializing nation along the vestiges of the frontier. Rølvaag uses the theme of madness to explore the movement of Norwegians to the interior of the Midwest. Madness functions as a plot device to illustrate the collective anxiety of the Norwegian immigrant group and their integration into the mainstream of American identity. My dissertation reveals madness as a through line in this diverse body of literature that spans the nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, which complicates the jingoistic narratives popular in this nation’s past. Exploring the theme of madness in these texts provides new perspectives on American literature, perceptions of the nation and the frontier. Above all, it complicates the idea of American identity, its past, and its potential future.
Improving Jamaican Schools Through Better Leadership: Evaluating The Effectiveness Of The Aspiring Principals Program, App: A Mix-Methods Analysis Of Educational Leadership Preparation In Jamaica
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Henry, Darien George; Stull, Judith C., 1944-; McGinley, Christopher W.; Davis, James Earl, 1960-; DuCette, Joseph P.
This study evaluates the effectiveness of Jamaica's Aspiring Principals Program, APP, administered by the National College for Educational Leadership, NCEL. The study is conceptually grounded in the Marzano School Leadership Model and the Tannenbaum Model of Training Effectiveness using a mixed-methods analysis of survey responses from 108 principals who are both APP and non-APP graduates in the seven administrative educational regions across the country. The study reveals that APP graduates demonstrate significantly higher confidence levels in principalship roles in navigating conflict management and decision-making than non-APP graduates. A regression analysis shows that APP participation positively influences job satisfaction, while extensive administrative responsibilities tend to decrease it. Overall, the findings emphasize the transformative impact of the APP on enhancing leadership confidence, conflict management skills, and job satisfaction, underscoring the importance of continued investment in principal preparation in Jamaica. The study underscores the critical need for policy reforms that integrate crisis management and adaptive leadership into the training of aspiring principals, ensuring that school leaders are well-prepared to navigate especially systems-altering occurrences like the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also encourages a licensing regime for principals, complemented by continuous professional development, to maintain high leadership standards and accountability. The findings emphasize the value of context-sensitive leadership preparation, advocating for a leadership preparation curriculum that blends theoretical knowledge with practical experiences tailored to the unique challenges faced by Jamaican school principals.
“THE HOODOO YOU KNEW”: AN AFROCENTRIC (RE)LOCATION OF CONJURE AND HOODOO COSMOLOGY
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-10) Isaacs, Justice Ifafunmilayo; Mazama, Ama, 1961-; Flannery, Ifetayo M.; Williams-Witherspoon, Kimmika; Williams, Jennifer
This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on African spirituality and its contemporary relevance to African peoples in the Diaspora by exploring Hoodoo through an Afrocentric lens. By adopting this perspective, the researcher aims to normalize Hoodoo as a living spiritual system and shed light on the influence of Eurocentric scholarship in shaping perceptions of Hoodoo and African Diasporic historiographies. Moving beyond the sensationalism of 19th and 20th-century literature and folklorist analyses, this project critically examines the terminology applied to Hoodoo, such as syncretism and creolization, and situates Hoodoo as an extension of African traditional religions and magico-spiritual traditions. This work employs an Afrocentric framework to explore themes of space, place, healing, and resistance within the Hoodoo tradition, thereby enriching the discourse surrounding Afrocentric Hoodoo cosmology. The project critiques the location of theologians within the field, aiming to recover and return Hoodoo to its Afrocentric roots. Additionally, it addresses the long-overlooked spatial analysis of Hoodoo, challenging the one-dimensional orientation commonly attributed to the tradition. The researcher expands the discourse on Hoodoo by aligning it with African traditional religions and magico-spiritual systems (ATR-MSs). By engaging with the African worldview, the study embraces the fluidity of time and place, offering a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of Hoodoo. Through this approach, the project seeks to deepen the appreciation and understanding of Hoodoo's role in the spiritual lives of African peoples in the Diaspora.
The Role of BDNF and Dural Damage in Spontaneous Locomotor Recovery after Spinal Cord Injury
(Temple University. Libraries, 2024-12) Paz Amaya, Jose; Lemay, Michel A.; Spence, Andrew J.; Côté, Marie-Pascale; Thompson, Christopher K.
The present study aims to elucidate the mechanisms underlying locomotor recovery following spinal cord injury (SCI) through the investigation of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) delivery, and inflammatory responses associated with different spinal transection methods.Chapter 2 focuses on characterizing lumbar interneurons' activity during air- stepping following chronic intrathecal BDNF delivery to the lumbar spinal cord. BDNF has demonstrated the potential to elicit full locomotor recovery in untrained spinal animals, suggesting therapeutic benefits for SCI patients. However, the effects of BDNF on large populations of neurons responsible for this recovery are not well understood. The hypothesis is that intrathecal BDNF delivery will result in significantly increased neuronal activity in the L3-L4 segments during air-stepping. A programmable, implantable mini- pump was used to deliver BDNF at 50 ng/day for 35 days post-transection. Kinematic data was collected before and after BDNF delivery, and multiunit extracellular recordings were be obtained using 64-channel microelectrode arrays. Results from analysis suggest that while BDNF evidently increases neuronal excitability in treated cats, development of locomotor recovery seems to be achieved through subtle changes in neuronal activity. Chapter 3 investigates the mechanisms behind instances of spontaneous locomotor recovery observed in the literature, which could involve endogenous BDNF or other beneficial mechanisms. It compares locomotor recovery between open-dura and closed- dura spinal transection methods in cats. Previous studies have reported inconsistent outcomes regarding spontaneous recovery and the need for treadmill training. The ii hypothesis is that an open-dura transection will lead to better recovery during treadmill locomotion in untrained spinal cats. Kinematic data and ground reaction forces were measured to assess locomotor parameters and weight-bearing abilities, providing a quantitative analysis of recovery. The results show that an open-dura transection is associated with the development of spontaneous locomotor recovery in untrained spinal cats. Chapter 3 also examines differences in the inflammatory response at the lower thoracic cord between the two spinal transection methods, given the significant role of inflammation in CNS repair and recovery. The hypothesis is that the open-dura method will result in a higher inflammatory response, characterized by increased macrophages, microglia, and BDNF levels caudal to the transection site. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) and RNA in-situ hybridization assays were used to analyze the cellular and molecular environment near the injury site. Open dura animals show a decrease inflammatory response to injury and show no evidence of endogenous BDNF caudal to the injury. These results suggest the development of spontaneous locomotor recovery associated with a transected dura can be elicited through inflammatory mechanisms alone without the need for neurotrophic intervention.

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