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From Ember to Oak Senior Honors Thesis
No full textThis honors thesis examines the intersection of trauma-informed design and transitional housing, focusing on how the built environment can empower survivors of sex trafficking on their journey toward independent living. Individuals emerging from rehabilitation programs often face emotional vulnerability and financial instability, frequently lacking the stable foundation needed to prevent relapse into harmful environments, including re-trafficking or prostitution. Current recovery facilities offer institutionalized, clinical environments that do not adequately address the long-term needs of survivors for independence, community, and self-sufficiency. Without safe and thoughtfully designed environments, many survivors may feel too apprehensive to pursue independence, resulting in a return to harmful or familiar cycles of exploitation. This research suggests that trauma-informed interior design can be transformative, enabling survivors to reclaim their agency and ultimately lead productive and fulfilling lives. The project, From Ember to Oak, is a trauma-informed transitional housing initiative located in Fulshear, Texas?a tranquil suburban area with convenient access to Houston, one of the leading cities for sex trafficking in the United States. The site was intentionally chosen for its balance of seclusion and accessibility, allowing survivors to find peace and privacy while remaining close to essential resources such as healthcare, education, and employment opportunities. The name From Ember to Oak symbolizes a gradual yet powerful transformation?just as fire turns wood to ash, enriching the soil for new growth, survivors rise from their struggles with resilience, gradually strengthening their roots and foundations over time. The design embodies a trauma-informed approach to healing, transitioning from shared to individual housing units that support semi-independent living. Survivors gradually assume responsibilities such as budgeting, maintaining personal spaces, and establishing daily routines. Central to this residential model is a strong sense of community, supported by a communal house for shared meals and entertainment, a job readiness center with a professional clothing boutique, and therapeutic spaces for emotional healing?including horse stables for equine therapy and a community garden that fosters mindfulness and personal growth. Wellness-oriented strategies, incorporating elements such as natural light, biophilic design, and animal-assisted therapy, contribute to regulating the nervous system, fostering self-worth, and facilitating long-term emotional rehabilitation. Importantly, the program includes flexible spaces that promote choice and control, aiding survivors in reclaiming their agency and identity. Personalized private areas, along with access to both quiet and active spaces, empower residents to engage at their own pace. These trauma-informed techniques effectively address the specific emotional and behavioral characteristics exhibited by survivors during this stage of recovery, including anxiety about the future, challenges with boundaries, and a desire for cautious optimism. From Ember to Oak serves not only as transitional housing but also as a platform for connection and sustained empowerment, meeting survivors where they are and growing alongside them within the created spaces. When integrated with therapy, career support, and community engagement, these trauma-informed environments can significantly reduce the risk of relapse into harmful environments and foster sustainable change. Through intentional and thoughtful design, transitional housing can offer a nurturing atmosphere that guides survivors from a state of fragility to one of flourishing, ultimately nurturing them into strong, liberated individuals rooted in stability and hope
Development of an immunotoxicity screening assay: Identification of immune function biomarkers in the fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas)
No full textEnvironmental contaminants can disrupt immune function in fish, increasing disease susceptibility and posing significant ecological and economic risks. However, a standardized assay for screening immunotoxicity in North American fish species has yet to be developed. This study aimed to adapt the existing fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) larval growth and survival test to include an assessment of innate immune function using transcriptomic biomarkers following a partial tail injury. Differential gene expression analysis via RNA-seq identified 680 significantly regulated genes, of which a substantial portion were linked to immune and inflammatory processes. Key biomarkers—gfap, lamc1, nrp1a, tnfrsf1a, il1β, cox2, and caspa—were validated by qPCR in biological replicates, confirming consistent upregulation after tail injury. To assess assay sensitivity, larvae were exposed to the known immunosuppressant naproxen. While gene expression responses varied, tnfrsf1a, caspa, and cox2 showed trends consistent with immunosuppressive activity. These results demonstrate the potential for using transcriptomic biomarkers in fathead minnows to detect innate immune modulation by chemical stressors and establish a foundation for a standardized immunotoxicity screening assay. Future work should refine biomarker panels and apply the assay to environmentally relevant contaminants
Reparative genre: Disability and girlhood in young adult literature
No full textCategories of disability, genre, and girlhood are dependent on time, place, and culture, and these categories construct norms by rendering other phenomena as unthinkable. Young adult fiction transmits, but may also resist, such norms. Young adult literature can bring together depictions of girlhood and disability within genre fiction to mount particularly effective versions of such breaks from norms in the 21st-century United States, thereby giving the genre reparative force. To illustrate this cultural work, this dissertation analyzes examples from three YA sub-genres—historical fiction, romance, and science fiction—in The Degenerates by J. Albert Mann, Sick Kids in Love by Hannah Moskowitz, and On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis. These authors use reparative genre to reject stereotypes and establish new disability-centered narrative patterns of girlhood. These new patterns thus revise conventions and expectations within a genre to suggest radical possibilities for disabled girls’ lives and futures
Dual identities: Texas dual credit faculty communication satisfaction regarding their dual credit courses
No full textDual credit (DC) courses allow students who are in high school to take college courses and concurrently receive credit for both institutions (Barnett & Stamm, 2010; Duncheon & Relles, 2020). There has been a drastic increase in DC student enrollment in recent years, though there is a gap in current research that focuses on faculty members who teach DC. Little research focuses on communication that DC faculty receive from the two institutions in which their DC students are enrolled. The proposed study will explore the question: How does Texas dual credit faculty members’ communication satisfaction regarding their dual credit courses vary? Specifically, the following components of communication satisfaction were explored: How satisfied are DC faculty members with communication climate? How satisfied are DC faulty with organizational integration? How satisfied are DC faculty members with media quality? How satisfied are DC faculty members with general organizational perspective? Eight DC faculty members at one community college district were interviewed in this qualitative collective case study with two rounds of interviews for each participant to better understand their communication satisfaction regarding their DC courses. Weick’s (1969) sensemaking theory and Downs Hazen’s (1977) concept of communication satisfaction was used as the theoretical framework. The study will help fill gaps in literature and help assess DC programs to better serve both faculty and students
Neuromechanical analysis of gait coordination during forward and backward walking
No full textIntroduction: Gait coordination reflects the integration of neural and biomechanical systems essential for functional mobility. Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is characterized by gait disturbances that impair both segmental and interlimb coordination, yet the nuanced effects of walking speed and direction on coordination across the lifespan remain poorly understood. This dissertation investigates coordination and control during forward (FW) and backward walking (BW) across different age groups and neurological statuses, with a focus on nonlinear coordination metrics to identify neuromechanical deficits and adaptability constraints.
Methods: Three interrelated studies were conducted. Chapter II presents a scoping review of coordination impairments in PD, synthesizing literature on gait-phase synchronization, Phase Coordination Index (PCI), and segmental timing abnormalities. Chapters III and IV detail experimental studies analyzing Continuous relative Phase (CRP) and PCI across young adults (YA), older adults (OA), and individuals with PD during FW and BW at multiple treadmill speeds. Kinematic data were collected via motion capture and analyzed using Visual3D and MATLAB pipelines. Spatiotemporal and coordination parameters were statistically examined through mixed-effects ANOVA models.
Results: The scoping review synthesized findings from 14 studies and identified notable gait impairments in individuals with PD, including reduced walking velocity, shorter step length, and limited joint range of motion. Coordination deficits were commonly reflected in increased synchronization delays, abnormal phase shifts, and elevated PCI values, particularly in individuals with freezing of gait. These findings underscore the heterogeneous motor effects of PD and support the need for individualized assessments. In the experimental studies, faster walking improved segmental coordination (CRP) and bilateral limb phasing (PCI), particularly during mid-stance and swing transitions. These adaptations aligned with the theoretical framework of Dynamical Systems Theory, suggesting that speed functions as a control parameter to promote stable coordination patterns. In contrast, individuals with PD exhibited elevated CRP and PCI values across all speeds and in both walking directions, indicating reduced adaptability and impaired neuromechanical control. The effect of BW further amplified these impairments, with pronounced segmental desynchronization and temporal instability. Spatiotemporal patterns in PD—including prolonged stance time and shorter step length—suggested bradykinetic constraints that limited the motor system’s ability to adapt coordination patterns effectively.
Conclusion: These findings underscore the clinical utility of CRP and PCI as diagnostic tools, as both metrics sensitively captured phase-specific deficits in segmental and interlimb coordination that were not evident from traditional spatiotemporal data alone. Specifically, CRP revealed impaired segmental coordination and diminished intralimb adaptability in PD—particularly during BW—while PCI detected persistent bilateral timing disturbances resistant to speed modulation. The consistent elevation of these coordination indices in PD, even when step length and walking speed remained comparable across conditions, suggests their potential for detecting latent neuromotor impairments. Thus, CRP and PCI offer mechanistically informative markers of gait dysfunction that extend beyond descriptive parameters, supporting their integration into clinical assessments to guide individualized rehabilitation targeting dynamic motor control
Fragrant ceramics: Indigenous industry in early colonial Tonalá
No full textTonalá, Mexico’s ancient pottery tradition and religious culture foreground the introduction of púcaros, a polished ceramic drinking vessel popular in Spain. In the Classic period, bichromatic burnished ceramics were traditionally used in a funerary context to honor the Tonalteca elite. The production of red-slipped burnished wares during the colonial period reveals the Tonalteca’s desire to reestablish their Indigenous ceramic traditions and mobilize their awareness of Spanish consumer’s taste. Although Spanish colonization prompted epidemics and Christian conversion, the Indigenous artisans overcame these challenges, building a ceramics industry that preserved their pottery techniques. An examination of the Indigenous adaptation and Spanish infiltration of these burnished ceramics demonstrates the transculturation of Indigenous wares from bichromatic religious vessels into monochromatic secular redware, indicating cultural resistance under Spanish colonial rule.
The infiltration of Tonalá redware in elite Spanish society manifests in Baroque Spanish still lifes, media that artistically represent these Indigenous-made ceramics as collectible curiosities. Traditional art historical studies read these vessels as emblems of empire, but I claim that red burnished ware in Spanish still lifes reveal Indigenous agency, positioning these Tonalteca artisans as contributors to European culture. Using materiality and material culture methods, I argue that burnished ceramics, both as religious offerings in the tombs of the deceased in Tonalá and as utilitarian redware in the homes of peninsular Spaniards are symbols of socio-economic status and power. When depicted in still life paintings, these now secularized objects undergo further commodification as fictionalized representations, underscoring the transculturation of Indigenous Tonalteca products into desirable status symbols for the Spanish elite
"I cannot find any reason for this story to have been written": An empire-critical, anti-patriarchal reading of the Joseph narrative
No full textGenesis is a collection of strategically remembered and crafted stories that reached final form in the Persian Period. Among its main purposes is the establishment of formative and rather requisite national identity, cultural memory, and social touchstones—many of which are decidedly patriarchal, nationalistic, and ethnocentric. It is strange, then, to center the latter 25% of that book around a feminine young boy who reads as gay even to early interpreters and whose Hebrew ethnicity is ceremonially exchanged for Egyptian. I read Joseph’s as a counternarrative to the overarching themes of patriarchal, kyriarchal, and hierarchal power-over-the-other in the Hebrew Bible, which seems confirmed by Joseph’s legacy as partially forgotten, partially obscured, partially rehabilitated, and largely marginalized everywhere from the rest of the Hebrew Bible; the Second Temple Period literature; the Dead Sea Scrolls; the early Jewish materials like the midrashim, Targumim, and Talmudim; and Rabbinic sources. Utilizing an intersectional approach drawing from feminist, queer, and postcolonial hermeneutics, I argue that Joseph is a liminal figure who straddles binaries and whose gender, sexuality, and ethnicity are in constant flux. What is more, these fluctuations mark Joseph as a paradigm of how colonized, oppressed, queer, subaltern, and otherwise marginalized people, both among early exilic and modern readers, can 1. embrace their nondominant identities as theologically and socio-politically valid, 2. avoid the pitfalls of power and performance that ensnare Joseph, and 3. develop a horizon of hope for a queer future marked by preference for the marginalized
Психічне здоров’я та батьківство серед українських сімей, постраждалих від війни: багатоконтекстне дослідження
No full textThis mixed-methods study examined how war exposure, social support, and daily stressors affect the mental health and parenting practices of Ukrainian caregivers across three displacement contexts: refugees (22.3%), internally displaced persons (22.9%), and non-displaced families (52.7%). Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory and the ecological resilience framework, the study explored how multi-level stressors shape the functioning of caregivers affected by war. The analytic sample included 319 Ukrainian caregivers who completed standardized quantitative surveys and open-ended qualitative questions. Daily stressors strongly predicted distress, but neither daily stressors nor perceived social support moderated the pathway from trauma to mental health. Structural equation modeling showed that caregiver mental health significantly mediated the relationship between war exposure and harsh parenting, especially among non-displaced caregivers. Qualitative findings revealed cumulative stressors across ecological levels, with the most frequent challenges related to psychological strain, war exposure, economic hardship, and war-related fear and instability. Together, results highlight mental health as a key mechanism linking war trauma to disrupted parenting. Findings emphasize the need for caregiver-centered interventions and structural supports to protect family well-being in conflict-affected settings
The Oral Health Status of Children and Adults with Intellectual Disabiilities: A Literature Reiew Study Ultizing Special Smiles Data Collections
No full textIndividuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience significant disparities in oral health compared to the general population due to barriers such as limited access to care, communication challenges, socioeconomic factors, and a fractured healthcare system. This study analyzes global oral health outcomes among 48,902 Special Olympics athletes using data collected through Special Smiles screenings between 2019 and 2025. The program provides free dental screenings and education as part of the Special Olympics Healthy Athletes initiative. Findings highlight a high prevalence of oral health issues, including fluorosis, gingivitis, missing teeth, and several other conditions with regional variation. Data was collected using standardized procedures and documented through the Healthy Athletes Screening Form. The study highlights the need for inclusive dental health programs and sustained access to care to reduce oral health disparities and improve health outcomes for individuals with ID