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CELTS Reflection
No full textThis presentation reflects on my experience as a social work intern at Riveredge Hospital through the CELTS Fall 2025 Internship Award. I will discuss my work primarily in the adolescent girls unit while also supporting adolescent boys, children and adult patients. The presentation highlights clinical responsibilities including psychosocial assessments, crisis safety planning and therapeutic engagement with patients facing substance use, unstable home environments and histories of neglect or abuse. I will also reflect on group facilitation, collaboration with multidisciplinary teams and the professional growth gained by applying classroom knowledge to real-world clinical settings
“This Is the Job Now”: A Phenomenological Study of Meaning Making in University Faculty Regarding Role Expectations in Response to Student Crises
No full textIn recent years, faculty members in higher education found themselves at the intersection of rising student mental health concerns and increasing institutional expectations regarding student support. While universities traditionally framed faculty as educators and researchers, faculty roles now require engagement in emotional labor and crisis management—often without corresponding training. This dissertation explores how instructors at one university navigate these expanding expectations, examining their self-understanding, institutional positioning, and the broader implications of compliance care work. Compliance care work is a term developed in this study to describe the bureaucratization of faculty involvement in student well-being. It is an institutionalized response to the tension between care expectations and legal constraints. Drawing on 33 in-depth faculty interviews and employing a phenomenological and inhabited institutionalism framework, this study identifies three dominant institutional myths and the lived reality they stand in tension with that shape faculty-student interactions. Findings suggest that while faculty recognize the increased prevalence and severity of student mental health challenges, they remain divided on their role in addressing these concerns. Ultimately, this research contributes to broader sociological conversations on faculty labor, institutional change, and the intersections of emotional labor and higher education policy
Competency Alignment and Competency-Based Education in Higher Education: institutional Perspectives from Illinois’ Early Childhood Workforce initiatives
No full textCompetency-based education (CBE) has gained attention as a model for expanding access to postsecondary education and aligning workforce preparation with industry needs. In Illinois, state-supported initiatives have sought to integrate competency alignment into professional development and higher education programs for the early childhood workforce. This mixed-methods study examines how postsecondary ECE programs in Illinois are implementing CBE, the extent to which competency alignment influences program design, and how institutional leaders and faculty perceive CBE adoption. Findings indicate that while state-supported initiatives have increased institutional engagement with competency alignment, CBE adoption remains partial and selective rather than fully transformative. Programs are more likely to implement credit for prior learning, modularized coursework, and competency-driven pathways while maintaining traditional faculty roles, grading models, and structured term lengths. Through the lens of Institutional Theory, the study finds that coercive pressures from policy mandates drive initial engagement, normative influences from professional networks shape faculty perceptions, and mimetic behaviors lead institutions to selectively adopt CBE components modeled by peer institutions. Qualitative insights from faculty and administrators reveal both opportunities and challenges associated with competency alignment. While some faculty see CBE as a promising model for enhancing workforce preparation and student flexibility, others express concerns about increased administrative workload, lack of instructional autonomy, and rigid competency frameworks. The study suggests that faculty engagement and institutional flexibility are critical factors in sustaining meaningful CBE adoption beyond policy compliance. This research contributes to the broader literature on CBE in higher education by demonstrating how policy-driven competency alignment influences institutional decision-making. Findings have implications for policymakers, higher education leaders, and faculty, emphasizing the need for balanced approaches that integrate external accountability with institutional autonomy. Future research should explore longitudinal trends in CBE implementation, student experiences in competency-driven programs, and comparative analyses across different state policy contexts
Development of Chemical Modifications to the Electron Transport Layer of Organic Light Emitting Diodes
No full textInterlayers are used at the metal-on-organic interfaces of organic semiconductor devices to alleviate complications due to thermal metal deposition. Common methods of depositing interlayers include spin-coating, atomic layer deposition, and thermal deposition. These techniques have unintended drawbacks and limitations including by-product formation, solution degrading underlying layers, and limited compatible materials. Reactive installation of interlayers provides a way to modify the metal-organic interface while avoiding issues of the other techniques and providing secondary benefits. However, this method has yet to be utilized at the cathode-electron transport layer (ETL) interface within organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). The reactive nitrogen of TPBi (2,2\u27,2\u27\u27-(1,3,5-benzinetriyl)-tris(1-phenyl-1-H-benzimidazole)) allowed for various reactions to occur on the surface, including a ring opening with propylene oxide and acid-base reaction with trifluoroacetic acid. The addition of propylene oxide to the surface of thin film TPBi introduced a controllable oxygen-rich interlayer, confirmed by high-resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The presence of propylene oxide lowered the contact angle and increased the wettability of TPBi while not negatively affecting a bottom-emission OLED. The reactive nitrogen of TPBi also acted as a base for deprotonation of trifluoroacetic acid leaving a carboxylate interlayer seen on polarization modulation infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy (PM-IRRAS). The carboxylate layer on the surface acted as a metal binder with an aluminum cathode, as shown in XPS and PM-IRRAS. While this work is targeted at the metal-on-organic interfaces of the ETL and cathode in OLEDS, it could be applied to a wide range of organic semiconductor devices for targeted interfacial modifications
Insights into Female Urinary Microbiota through Long-Read 16S rRNA Sequencing
No full textThe human urinary microbiome—once thought to be sterile—is now recognized as a dynamic, low-biomass microbial community with potential implications for urinary tract health. Conventional short-read 16S rRNA gene sequencing targeting individual variable regions often lacks the taxonomic resolution needed to distinguish closely related species, while culture-based methods may miss fastidious or low-abundance taxa. We applied full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing across all nine variable regions to daily urine samples collected from asymptomatic premenopausal female participants. Sequence data were processed with a modified DADA2 pipeline optimized for long reads to generate exact sequence variants. We compared species-level community profiles against both short-read (V4 region) Illumina sequencing and expanded quantitative urine culture (EQUC). Full-length sequencing markedly improved species-level resolution, allowing discrimination of taxa such as Lactobacillus crispatus versus L. iners. It also allowed for the identification and discrimination of species within the same genus, like Gardnerella, Streptococcus, and Ureaplasma—species under-represented or undetected by short-read and culture-based approaches. Long-read profiles revealed resilient community dynamics: despite transient disruptions associated with menstruation or sexual activity, individual microbiomes tended to revert to baseline composition. Full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing provides enhanced taxonomic resolution and greater sensitivity for profiling the urinary microbiome in low-biomass samples. By offering high‐resolution, longitudinal insights into urinary microbiome fluctuations, this strategy lays the foundation for precision diagnostics and personalized interventions aimed at preserving and restoring urinary tract health
Tu Casa No es Mi Casa: Decolonizing Educational Practices by Accounting for the Experience of Latinx Non-Citizen Permanent Resident College Students
No full textThe longing for home is a feeling that is intrinsically at the heart of the human experience. Unfortunately, structures of power and domination play a key role in the way different populations are able to engage with different environments as locations of comfort, where a sense of belonging might fruitfully develop. To that end, this study analyzes current educational and research practices that have failed to account for the experience of Latinx Non-Citizen Permanent Resident (LNCPR) students in the United States—through a decolonization lens—since their existence and experience is often dismissed by an academia that assumes that they are merely in-transit within the binary of citizen and non-citizen status. On the whole, this study answers the following research question: How do LNCPR students conceptualize sense of belonging and support, according to their own experience and narratives? By affirming and centering the concerns, barriers, and specific problems experienced and reported by this oftentimes invisible population, this study sheds light into the way LNCPR status demarcates a new borderlands at the intersection of immigration, citizenship, legal, and acceptability statuses that impact sense of belonging conceptualizations for these students. The application of a qualitative Existential Phenomenological (EP) study of 13 LNCPR participants through their testimonios and pláticas is used to honor and highlight the experiences of these students as expressed by them in their own words. Analyzed through a decolonization framework, results from this study provide critical considerations to develop a new model for student-support practices needed to foster a more inclusive, decolonial, and authentic sense of belonging, needed to improve outcome metrics for LNCPR students in college campuses throughout the U.S
Refining cross-population polygenic risk scores across diverse populations
No full textLarge biobanks containing whole genome sequences connected to the deidentified electronic health records of hundreds of thousands of individuals are increasingly available to researchers. This has facilitated the development of polygenic risk scores (PRS), which use machine learning to predict risk of disease and other phenotypes from millions of genetic variants. Due to Eurocentricity of available genetic data, PRS have primarily been trained in populations of European descent. Differences in allele frequencies, effect sizes, and linkage disequilibrium patterns between populations can limit the transferability of PRS across different populations. Given that most data are from European genetic ancestry populations, we assessed how PRS trained in predominantly European populations with a small proportion of other ancestral populations like those in the Pan-UK Biobank perform in more diverse ancestral populations like those in All of Us. We also examined PRS performance when scores were trained and tested in subsets of the same dataset (All of Us). PRS-CSx is a Bayesian PRS training method that combines genetic effects across populations via a shared continuous shrinkage prior to improve polygenic prediction in diverse genetic ancestries. We applied PRS-CSx to standing height GWAS summary statistics from five populations from the Pan-UK Biobank and All of Us. Additionally, we performed a grid search of PRS-CSx phi parameters (1e-2, 1e-4, 1e-6) and three different seeds to assess training model variance. To determine how to weight the resulting PRS for each population, we validated the PRS-CSx models using ensemble learning validation and tested them in an independently held-out test set. We evaluated the results by comparing the correlation between PRS-CSx-predicted height and observed height after adjusting for sex at birth, age, and 16 genotypic PCs. In this study, we hypothesized that PRS-CSx models trained in multiple ancestries with diverse data distribution will improve PRS prediction compared to models trained with predominantly European data or trained within a single ancestry for standing height. Contrary to what we hypothesized, PRS-CSx models trained with predominantly European data, but with a larger sample size, results in better predictive performance than models trained with a diverse dataset. However, the African validated and tested models perform similarly regardless of their training dataset. PRS-CSx models performed better than PRS-CS in nearly all populations, demonstrating the utility of training models in diverse population
Investigating the Mechanism of Resistance to IDO1 Enzyme Inhibitor Treatment in Human Glioblastoma
No full textGlioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and most aggressive form of adult cancer in the central nervous system, with GBM accounting for the majority of all malignant brain tumors. GBM is currently considered to be an incurable form of cancer, with over 14,000 patients diagnosed in the United States last year. Given the success of immunotherapy for treating other types of cancer, our group has investigated the possibility of therapeutically neutralizing immunosuppressive indoleamine 2,3 dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) in patients with GBM. Canonically, IDO1 is an immunosuppressive cytoplasmic enzyme that catalyzes the first step in metabolizing L-tryptophan into L-kynurenine (ie. ↓L-Trp→↑L-Kyn). In vitro, GBM cell IDO1 expression leads to L-Trp depletion and/or L-Kyn accumulation, leading to the functional inhibition of co-cultured T cells. Additionally, higher patient resected GBM IDO1 expression levels are significantly correlated with worse GBM patient survival outcomes. Surprisingly, however, pharmacological IDO1 enzyme inhibitor (IDO1i) treatment (ie. ↑L-Trp→↓L-Kyn) of immunocompetent mice with intracranial GBM does not improve their overall survival. This preclinical finding is consistent with 5 different phase 3 clinical trials that determined IDO1 enzyme inhibitor treatment fails to improve survival in human patients with cancer. This raises critical questions about the mechanism(s) of IDO1 enzyme inhibitor treatment and how it interacts with the tumor microenvironment during treatment. We previously investigated the effects of IDO1 enzyme inhibitor on GBM cell IDO1 activity in whole cell lysate (WCL), exosomes, and vesicle free media (VFM) fractions. The results show a novel effect whereby the treatment with an IDO1 enzyme inhibitor significantly enriches IDO1 protein outside of the cell and in the VFM fraction. This preliminary observation is striking since it was recently reported that extracellularly localized IDO1 mediates an immunosuppressive effect. My thesis work aims to investigate the mechanism by which IDO1 enzyme inhibitor treatment confers a gain-of-function to IDO1 that causes its extracellular enrichment, and in-turn, mediates a novel immunosuppressive function
Faith and Science in Harmony: Reconciling Evolution with Biblical Inerrancy
Get PDFThis presentation explores how Christians can reconcile the concept of evolution with the inerrancy of the bible from a faith-based worldview