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Divine and Determined: Black Sorority Sisterhood and the Power of Intersectional Social Capital at Predominantly White Institutions (PWI) for Leadership and Career Development
No full textThis study investigates the multifaceted role of historically Black sororities in fostering social capital, leadership development, and career preparedness among Black women at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Situated at the intersection of Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism, and Intersectionality, the study adopts a narrative inquiry methodology to amplify the lived experiences and self-authored stories of Black collegiate women who are members of National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) sororities.
Black sororities have historically operated not only as social organizations but also as sites of empowerment, political activism, and community engagement. At PWIs—where Black students often face marginalization, underrepresentation, and institutionalized racial and gender biases—these organizations provide critical counterspaces that affirm identity, build solidarity, and facilitate access to both cultural and social capital. This research explores how Black sorority members navigate their academic, social, and professional environments, examining how sisterhood supports their resilience, shapes their leadership identities, and prepares them for post-graduate career trajectories.
Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with current and former members of NPHC sororities who attended PWIs across the Southern region in the United States. Through in-depth interviews, the study examines how these women navigate the racialized and gendered terrains of PWIs, build networks of support, and leverage the cultural and social capital embedded within Black Greek-letter organizations.
Findings suggest that Black sororities serve as transformative spaces that enhance leadership capacity, promote academic persistence, extend access to professional networks otherwise limited within PWI environments while fostering both individual and collective pathways to leadership and professional growth.
This research offers both theoretical insights and practical implications for educators, higher education administrators, and policymakers seeking to cultivate more inclusive and equitable environments for historically marginalized student populations. It calls for a deeper institutional recognition of the value Black Greek-letter organizations bring to campus life, student development, and long-term career outcomes for Black women navigating white-dominant educational spaces
Interfacial Phenomena of Plastics: From Surface Modifications to Environmental Impacts
No full textPlastic is a ubiquitous part of everyday life since its introduction in the previous century. Global production continues to exponentially increase, establishing plastics as one of the most dominant materials in modern manufacturing. Within the scope of academia, plastic is essential due to its low cost and sterility, particularly for minimizing contamination. Beyond the laboratory, plastic use spans numerous industries, and its use and disposal has since raised many environmental concerns. Once valued for its durability, plastics now pollute the environment in landfills and natural ecosystems. In recent decades, the consequences of this pollution have been investigated, yet the full impact is not fully understood. This Ph.D. dissertation examines three distinct aspects of plastic research from a colloidal perspective. First, we explore the use of plastic beads in colloidal science by synthesizing novel patchy particles and investigating their self-assembly behavior. By fine-tuning particle-solvent interactions, we selectively corrugate the particle surface while preserving its chemical composition. This allows us to isolate the impact of partial surface roughness and investigate its role in depletion-driven self-assembly. Next, we shift towards environmental remediation, introducing thermoresponsive foams to separate microplastics from solution. Conventional microplastic separation methods rely on compatible surface properties, which are not always consistent following disposal. Our approach utilizes the assembly of fatty acid into microtubules which trap microplastics in a foam. We present the results for our model system and for plastics that have undergone surface alterations due to aging, to reassure the process presented herein is dependent only on the physical properties of the microplastics. Finally, we investigate the changes in bacterial colonization to plastic surfaces. v Alcanivorax borkumensis, a known hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria, has been previously studied as a candidate for low-density polyethylene degradation. We examine how preconditioning the bacteria to different-length alkanes influences bacterial attachment and surface modifications on polyethylene. This leads to distinct adhesion behaviors and surface oxidation on the plastic, driven by bacterial colonization. Together, these studies contribute to a deeper understanding of plastic behavior in colloidal systems, its role in environmental pollution as well as potential remediation strategies
THREE ESSAYS ON CYBER INCIDENT RISK MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS
No full textCyber incident risk management has become an organizational priority due to the growing frequency and impact of cyber threats. Under institutional and regulatory pressure, organizations face a critical question: how to strategically manage cyber incident risk? Through a three-essay and multi-method research design, this dissertation answers that question by examining cyber incident risk management through a critical synthesis of literature, analysis of disclosure communication strategies and evaluation of their antecedents. Essay 1 adopts a hybrid review methodology, beginning with a scoping review of the current literature, followed by a critical review approach to problematize epistemic, conceptual, and methodological challenges. Drawing on the Perceived Environmental Uncertainty Framework, we identify key dynamics in cyber incident risk management research arising from state, response, and effect uncertainties. This essay challenges dominant assumptions in the field and uncovers future research pathways, such as the need to understand inter-firm and multi-firm breach dynamics and the bi-directional causality between firm responses and stakeholder impacts.
Essays 2 and 3 seize opportunities identified in Essay 1 to explore the cyber incident disclosure framing. First, Essay 2 applies advanced natural language processing (NLP) techniques with large language model (LLM) experiments to extract Prospect Theory-based framing features from 456 cyber incident disclosure letters addressed to customers. Employing a computationally intensive theory construction (CITC) framework, we find that companies strategically use framing mechanisms (including loss aversion, reference dependence, and probability weighting) to communicate breach and response characteristics. Our performance evaluation shows that chain-of-thought prompting and multi-agent LLM experiments perform substantially better than traditional NLP approaches for complex feature extraction.
Finally, Essay 3 examines the antecedents of strategic framing, focusing on breach characteristics, firm attributes, and regulatory pressures. We find that external breaches are associated with significantly higher usage of framing features compared to internal breaches. Furthermore, as regulatory pressures intensify and firms accumulate cyber incident management experience through peer breaches or prior breaches, their disclosures tend to exhibit less framing. Our findings offer regulators insights into organizational maneuvering through strategic communication. They also provide a comparative evaluation of LLMs for feature extraction and advanced critical directions for future research in cyber incident risk management
Intersectionality and Experiences with Mental Health Care: Transgender and Gender Diverse Autistic Adults
No full textCurrent prevalence rates of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in transgender and gender diverse (TGD) populations range between 4 and 13% (Thrower et al., 2020). Studies into autistic TGD individuals’ experiences with healthcare have primarily collected qualitative data, identifying themes including barriers to healthcare, invalidation of both autistic and TGD identities, difficulty finding competent providers, limited support and resources, and refusal of care (Cooper et al., 2022; Maroney & Horne, 2022; Hall et al., 2020). N = 3094 self-identified TGD adults completed the 2017 TransLifeline Mental Health Survey, a collaborative effort between the National LGBTQ Task Force and the TransLifeline, which investigated TGD access to and experience with mental health services. This online, cross-sectional survey was completed between June and October 2017. Chi-square analyses and Mann-Whitney U tests were utilized to examine the data and investigate relationships among the groups (i.e., autistic and non-autistic) and variables. Results indicated 19.4% of participants self-identified as autistic, which significantly differed from the Kristensen and Broome (2015) sample but did not differ from the Stagg and Vincent (2019) sample. Within the TransLifeline sample, autistic participants were found to be older, more likely to be assigned female at birth, more likely to identify as nonbinary, and have a greater number of mental health comorbidities than the non-autistic group. The autistic group endorsed significant negative experiences with mental health care professionals, which remained when controlling for age. Specifically, TGD autistic individuals reported avoiding coming out to a therapist due to fear of mistreatment or discrimination, having to educate a therapist on TGD issues, and experiencing greater proportions of discrimination than non-autistic TGD folks. Further, autistic participants reported more difficulty in finding an adequate therapist and were less likely to find their therapist knowledgeable about issues TGD people face than the non-autistic group. Future research should continue to investigate experiences of autistic TGD individuals in large samples, using both qualitative and quantitative measures to inform provider trainings and create standards of care. Trainings and industry standards of care could help implement changes in mental health settings and to better serve this community
Erratum: Correction: Soil contamination by environmentally persistent free radicals and dioxins following train derailment in East Palestine, OH (Environmental science. Processes & impacts (2025) 27 3 DOI: 10.1039/d4em00609g.)
Get PDFCorrection for \u27Soil contamination by environmentally persistent free radicals and dioxins following train derailment in East Palestine, OH\u27 by Myron L. Lard et al., Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1039/d4em00609g
Urban sprawl drives heterogeneous flood exposure patterns along socio-demographic gradients: a case study in the Amite River Basin during the 2016 Louisiana (USA) Floods
Get PDFThe impact of floods may be exacerbated due to urban sprawl, which leads to residential development in naturally flood-prone areas. In the United States (US), urban sprawl has been historically tied to racial segregation, while flood-prone suburban development has been facilitated by flood insurance. While previous studies have found links between flood exposure and socio-demographic inequities, no research has addressed this question by looking at watershed-level segregation and the location of properties relative to flood-prone areas. We evaluate socio-demographic patterns of flood impact during the 2016 Floods in Louisiana (LA), USA, and whether these impacts differed inside or outside the FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA), the nation’s main flood risk indicator for property owners. We assess this question in the Amite River Basin (ARB), LA, looking at the following socio-demographic predictors: (1) race, (2) income, (3) year of property built, and (4) property type, and accounting for the location of properties relative to the FEMA-SFHA (inside/outside), and the Parish of origin. The FEMA SFHA was generally a good predictor of flood impact, and the most impacted parishes were those within the downstream area of the ARB (EBR-East Baton Rouge, Ascension, and Livingston). At the watershed scale, properties in blocks dominated by wealthier black residents had a greater impact during this flood event, but the trends, varied by parish. Trends in the older and more urban EBR parish reflected those reported for the watershed. In the newer suburban parishes of Ascension and Livingston, the highest impact was experienced by high-income, predominantly white neighborhoods, mainly inside the FEMA SFHA. Properties built between 1970-1989 were associated with higher flood impact than homes built during other periods. While socio-demographic predictors of flood exposure were heterogeneous across the ARB, our findings collectively highlight the social costs of suburbanization into hazardous areas
Memory-Augmented LLM Agent for Predicting Locomotion Modes in Construction Activities
Get PDFThe construction industry faces significant challenges, including labor shortages, high physical demands, and safety risks, necessitating advanced assistive technologies like exoskeletons to enhance worker efficiency and reduce injuries. However, effective exoskeleton control in dynamic construction environments requires accurate locomotion prediction, a task complicated by the diversity of activities and reliance on supervised learning methods that struggle to generalize. This study investigates a multimodal approach to locomotion prediction, leveraging speech commands and visual data from smart glasses to enable adaptive and safe human-exoskeleton interaction. The research unfolds in two stages: the first develops a framework to evaluate the zero-shot capability and generalization of large language models, particularly GPT-4o, against supervised fine-tuned models (CLIP and ImageBind), predicting construction-related locomotion modes. Findings reveal that GPT-4o’s zero-shot performance achieves a weighted F1-score of 88%, closely rivaling CLIP’s fine-tuned 90%, though it struggles with ambiguous commands and limited temporal context. The second stage introduces an large language model-based agent augmented with both short-term and long-term memory systems, evaluated in demanding scenarios with clear, vague, and safety-critical commands. Compared to a no-memory baseline’s weighted F1-score of 73%, Brier Score of 0.244, and Expected Calibration Error of 0.222, the agent with both short-term and long-term memory reaches 90%, 0.090, and 0.044, respectively, enhancing accuracy and safety through contextual reasoning. By integrating intuitive modalities and memory-driven adaptability, this work advances high-level exoskeleton control, offering a scalable solution for complex construction tasks and contributing to safer, more efficient assistive technologies
In Situ Diversification of Insular Rodents: from Efficient Software to Integrative Empirical Approaches
No full textIn situ diversification shapes species diversity in large, topographically complex islands. However, our understanding of in situ diversification is limited by inefficient, complicated software requiring significant bioinformatics skills and, in many taxa, an unresolved taxonomy. In my dissertation, I combined the development of high-performance, user-friendly software with integrative morphological and molecular approaches to understand how a large, topographically complex island, such as Sulawesi, generates species diversity. I developed SEGUL, a high-performance, cross-platform phylogenomic software featuring efficient solutions for common phylogenomic tasks, such as alignment summary and manipulation. My approach laid a foundation for scalable genomic software to advance genomic research and aid teaching, where access to computing resources is limited. Using a combination of large-scale sampling across Sulawesi and an integrative approach combining mitochondrial genes, nuclear exons, ultra-conserved elements (UCEs), and morphological studies of external and skull features, I determined species boundaries within the Bunomys division, the largest group of murine rodents in Sulawesi, Indonesia. I tested whether Sulawesi’s known Areas of Endemism (AoEs), mountain isolation, or a combination of factors promoted diversification of the group. My phylogenetic analyses yielded several novel results, including the underestimation of species diversity in the Bunomys division, the paraphyly of the genus Taeromys, and greater genetic divergence among montane species than in lowland taxa. A complex interplay of paleo-islands and mountain formation may have promoted the diversification of the group in Sulawesi. Support for Sulawesi’s AoE paradigm was mixed. Morphological data indicated that divergent populations within the genus Frateromys found in the molecular studies represent distinct species, and I describe one of these as a new taxon. Overall, my dissertation highlights the significance of fieldwork, integrative empirical studies, and innovative technological solutions in unraveling the complexities of biodiversity
The Application of Syncopated Rhythms in the Development of Sight-Reading Skills for Non-Keyboard Music Majors
Get PDFThis study investigates the impact of integrating syncopated rhythms into the group piano curriculum for undergraduate music students with varied levels of piano proficiency. Participants (N=76) enrolled in Group Piano II and IV were assigned control and experimental groups across multiple class sections. Three research questions guided the study: (1) How does the introduction of syncopated rhythm patterns affect group piano students’ sight-reading performance? (2) How does consistent practice of syncopated rhythms influence students\u27 ability to sustain a steady pulse? (3) Do students consider exposure to syncopated rhythms a valuable component in their future careers as music educators or performers?
Findings indicate that students in the experimental group, who received weekly rhythm drills and notation exercises, demonstrated statistically significant improvement in sight-reading examples in 3/4 time signature. This finding suggests that using meters other than duple may improve learning through more focused instruction. Despite efforts, students still struggled with pulse consistency. Journal reflections and performance evaluations revealed that intentional tempo selection and hand coordination remain key challenges in piano learning. Survey results indicated that 63% of experimental group students felt more confident playing syncopated rhythms, and all respondents rated them as at least moderately valuable for their professional development. These findings support incorporating syncopated rhythm instruction as a meaningful and motivating component of group piano pedagogy. Future studies may explore how early exposure to rhythmically complex material influences long-term musical development and whether these benefits extend across diverse musical styles and educational contexts
EVALUATING GEOTECHNICAL PROPERTIES OF MUD-CAPPED DREDGE PITS IN THE OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF
No full textThe long-term stability of offshore dredge pits is critical to the sustainability of coastal restoration efforts, particularly in sediment-starved regions like the northern Gulf of Mexico. Among the most promising sand sources for Louisiana\u27s barrier island restoration are buried paleo-river channels known as mud-capped dredge pits (MCDPs), which are capped by cohesive mud and subjected to dynamic coastal conditions. While previous studies have focused on the morphological evolution of these features, limited research has investigated the geotechnical behavior of infilled sediments and their implications for slope stability and offshore infrastructure. This dissertation provides recommendations for the stability of the offshore pipeline at the MCDPs by addressing several key knowledge gaps by: (1) evaluating the geotechnical properties of MCDPs at Raccoon Island and Peveto Channel on middle and western Louisiana shelf, (2) investigating the effects of sand content on the undrained shear strength of mixed sediments, (3) characterizing wave-induced pore water pressure using long-term in-situ sensor deployments in an interdistributary bay, East Bay of Mississippi Delta, and (4) conducting inverse slope stability analysis of a wall failure at the Sandy Point MCDP on eastern Louisiana shelf near Mississippi Delta. Field data, laboratory testing, and numerical modeling are integrated to quantify physical and mechanical behavior, analyze failure mechanisms, and assess risks associated with sediment infill and hydrodynamic loading. Results reveal that infilled sediments exhibit lower shear strength and are significantly more prone to upheaval buckling compared to the surrounding continental shelf sediments due to their low effective unit weight and underconsolidated state. Based on consolidation test data and observed pore pressure dissipation rates, the infilled sediments are expected to reach near-equilibrium consolidation within approximately 10 to 15 years, depending on sediment composition and site-specific conditions. The undrained shear strength behavior of the mixed sediments aligns with th