Ecopoetry Online: Analyzing User Engagement with Environmental Poetry on Instagram

This project engages with two key questions in the field of empirical ecocriticism: How can literature matter in an era of climate crisis? And, what impact do environmental texts have on their audiences? I seek to expand this emergent field through a study of ecopoetry in social media spaces, examining how people interact with environmental poetry on Instagram. My project has primarily been concerns with laying a foundation for future research by 1) developing a methodology for studying user engagement, and 2) using text analysis tools such as Voyant to develop productive research questions. Ultimately, I argue that studying environmental poetry on Instagram can contribute to the field of empirical ecocriticism in two important ways: analyzing popular poems to understand how ecopoetry might reorient readers toward the nonhuman world, and analyzing poems with a high number of tagged users to understand what poetic elements tend to elicit a community-building reader response

Safarium: exploring routes for digital public history and pedagogy

Safarium (from the Persian for ‘travel’) is a database of travel and travel writing that enables researchers to identify and visualize historic journeys of the early modern period (14th-18th centuries). The project endeavors to promote transregional historical studies that involve complementary sources produced by authors of disparate cultures and geographies. By searching locations in Safarium's database, users can identify travel accounts across languages that comment on the queried locale as well as view maps of the associated travel itineraries. The project strives to put users in touch with sources they may be unaware of due to research specialties or language limitations. To extract information from travelogues and present it to researchers, this project utilizes text analysis and mapping methodologies. Beyond research, Safarium aspires to be a pedagogical platform that familiarizes students and the public with both early modern history and the digital humanities

HEFWA BRIEF: STAFFING FOR FINANCIAL WELLNESS PROGRAMS

This brief provides a snapshot into how financial wellness programs are staffed and which, if any, certifications staff hold. This data will allow emerging programs insight into how programs are staffed and what professional training they may seek

A Geography of Occupations

Holocaust Memorialization in the Baltic States is fraught with competing memory narratives stemming from the spatial and chronological proximity of Soviet violence and the Holocaust. This project seeks to use GIS mapping technology and archival resources to create a digital public history tool that visually situates the violence of both Occupations in a spatial context. Focusing on one site in Alytus, Lithuania, this project seeks to visualize the geographic closeness of these experiences of violence. To achieve this, this project uses a small-scale map marking sites of violence and memorialization of violence. The points on the map are accompanied by small articles to deliver both a visual and historical survey of Soviet and Nazi violence in Alytus

Assessing cultural value : ethical gatekeeping in choral music

Thesis (D. Mus.) – Indiana University, Music, 202

Extensions to Embedding Regression: Models for Context-Specific Description and Inference

Arthur Spirling is the Class of 1987 Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Rochester. Previously, he served on the faculties of Harvard University and New York University. Spirling’s research centers on quantitative methods for analyzing political behavior, especially institutional development and the use of text-as-data. His work on these subjects has appeared in outlets such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Currently he is active on problems at the intersection of data science and social science, including those related to machine learning, and large language models. He previously won teaching and mentoring awards at Harvard and NYU, along with the “Emerging Scholar” prize from the Society for Political Methodology.Social scientists commonly seek to make statements about how word use varies over circumstances—including time, partisan identity, or some other document-level covariate. For example, researchers might wish to know how Republicans and Democrats diverge in their understanding of the term “immigration.” Building on the success of pretrained language models, we introduce the a la carte on text (conText) embedding regression model for this purpose. This fast and simple method produces valid vector representations of how words are used—and thus what words “mean”—in different contexts. We show that it outperforms slower, more complicated alternatives and works well even with very few documents. The model also allows for hypothesis testing and statements about statistical significance. We also provide extensions of the model to non-English languages and demonstrate applications for the same

Degrees of Engagement: Foreign Policy Goals and the Internationalization of Education in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are neighbors and co-competitors for regional leadership in Central Asia. In terms of educational competitiveness, Kazakhstan’s government has emphasized internationalization in the development of its higher education system while Uzbekistan’s government has made far more limited efforts to internationalize education. I argue that differing foreign policy strategies contribute to such policy decisions. Both states have adopted foreign policy goals focusing on pursuing international partnerships with many actors (multilateralism). One notable divergence in this area, though, is that Uzbekistan’s foreign policy concept refers specifically to “strategic partnership[s] with the leading states of the world” [emphasis added]; Kazakhstan’s official document mentions no such qualifiers on which states to engage with. This project seeks to understand how the difference in scope of foreign policy goals results in concrete differences in higher education policy goals through an examination of international academic partnership networks of major public universities in these two countries

Assessing College Student Mental Health and Well-Being: Implications for Campus Support and Promising Practice

Concern about college students’ mental health and the need for institutions to provide more support are on the rise. This session will draw from three research projects—Student Well-Being Institutional Support Survey (SWISS), National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Mental Health & Well-Being module, and the Center for Healthy Minds and Human Flourishing course—to combine assessments and expand understanding of student mental health, perceptions of support, and effective interventions. We will highlight the most current and important findings about college student mental health and well-being, discuss implications for colleges and universities and considerations for equity, and exchange ideas about campus interventions that show the most promise

HEFWA Brief - April 2024 - MATURITY AND REPORTING UNITS OF FINANCIAL WELLNESS PROGRAMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

This brief provides a snapshot into when financial wellness programs (n=61) were founded and what campus units they report to (ex: financial aid, student affairs, etc.).This brief provides a snapshot into when financial wellness programs (n=61) were founded and what campus units they report to (ex: financial aid, student affairs, etc.)

The Fiscal Panacea of International Student Recruitment in the '80s and '90s

In my dissertation, “The Cosmopolitans: The Institute of International Education from Liberal Internationalism to Neoliberal Globalization (1919–2003),” I argue that Americans came to rely on international students as proxies to end global conflicts, fortify the United States’ geopolitical standing, advance capitalist economic development in the Global South, and keep U.S. colleges financially afloat. In my sixth dissertation chapter, “The Fiscal Panacea of International Student Recruitment in the ‘80s and ‘90s,” I discuss how the 1980s and 1990s marked a new era in which IIE prioritized corporate investment and acted as a broker between financially insecure universities and wealthy international students. For my HASTAC Conference presentation, I will introduce a Gephi analysis of the social networks formed during these decades of shifting international education sponsorship. I will present visual representations of these networks to illustrate the growing influence of corporations and wealthy students in the 1980s and 1990s because of domestic and foreign political decisions and processes