In Touch with Prairie Living, January 2024

January 2024 column for North Dakota and South Dakota newspapers

How Can Land Use Planning and Architectural Design Be Combined to Create a New Form of Residential Lake Shore Development?

This thesis envisions itself into the future to answer the questions of how we can allow numerous people to have the opportunity to acquire a residential waterfront property when the value of land continues to increase, and waterfront space proceeds to become more limited. With waterfront value increasing and space becoming more and more limited only a sparse amount of people get to experience the luxury of living on the water. I believe that a new area could be developed on multiple waterfront properties (lakes and oceans) that would allow additional waterfront views while allowing the value to be lower than other waterfront homes. The project would stay on the mainland and not require any special services to access via transportation or utilities services. The area would only be allowed to have residential structures in it, while also allowing shared access to some locations within the community. To understand the best design for the proposed waterfront space, a question is posed: How can the forming of land and the design of architecture be combined to create a new form of residential lakeshore properties? The new development will focus on producing the most waterfront views while still allowing the structures to feel like a home and allowing privacy to everyone. Having multiple communities with an option like this would allow more people to have a better chance of obtaining a waterfront property, while also potentially lowering the cost of surrounding waterfront value

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Higher Education President?s Email Communications in 2020 and 2021

Email communications from presidents to faculty, students, and staff communicate institutional priorities; they play an important role in shaping the ways that power, ideology, and influence are constructed and replicated across the institution (Serrano, 2018; McNaughtan & McNaughtan, 2018; Eddy, 2003; 2005; Briscoe, 2022). In this study, I explored presidential email communications sent between June 2020 and November 2021 across 11 public institutions in the United States. Eddy (2005; 2005) argued that university presidents have a responsibility to communicate as sense-makers during crises to help direct the campus conversation and to set the institutional agenda. As such, I sought better understanding of the nature of Higher Education presidential communications to expand knowledge of presidential communication styles and approaches to communicating institutional priorities. Specifically, using a Critical Discourse Analytic approach to data analysis, I sought to understand how the language used in emails were indicative of presidential and institutional priorities and if and how linguistic tool usage were utilized differently according to the topic

In Touch with Prairie Living, June 2023

June 2023 column for North Dakota and South Dakota newspapers

Building Connections Through Design

The typology of this thesis will be a modern art / design museum with a civic and education emphasis. The design will feature galleries, classrooms and workshops, hospitality spaces, and include flexible design strategies that will allow the space to accommodate a wide array of events. The museum will also feature and improve the current park located at the site using design strategies to increase usability. I will be using a combination of tactics during my research. A combination of case studies, a site visit, as well as visiting as many museums as I can. Can we create a new method of engaging our communities by communicating artistic importance and human scale within a design focused on civic and recreational typologies

Re-Imagining the RMS Titanic Through the Use of Architectural Fragmentation

Architecture often presents itself as a gateway to how we understand the past, whether through monuments, museums, or installations. There are many instances where architecture impacts how we perceive major historic events with the idea to immortalize the past. However, some instances are not as successful as others. My question is: How does architecture influence how we understand history? More specifically, how can architecture aid in thoughtfully articulating a historic tragedy such as the sinking of the RMS Titanic? Designing a museum to house the physical and linguistic fragments of the sinking of the RMS Titanic means transforming many personal stories into a collective cultural milieu as well as understanding the connection between the structure and its site. Located at the Titanic?s original destination known as Pier 59 in New York, the site of the museum displays the thousands of artifacts that have surfaced over the past century. This project aims to create an environment that not only transforms how the sinking is perceived, but to bring back a sense of empathetic storytelling that is currently lacking at the other Titanic museums around the world

Tan Son Nhat Intl Airport: Re-Designing Passenger Travel Experience

Think back to your last trip on a plane. Was it a nightmare of horror, anxiety, and stress? While aviation travel has brought unimaginable advancements to our lives, it?s far from perfect. And if you?ve ever been to an airport in Vietnam, you know it?s a whole other level of ?extra.? You won?t be going alone - your entire family, in-laws, and even distant cousins will join you. It?s not just an issue of architecture, but a cultural challenge that requires attention. That?s why this project aim to solve the problems I?ve encountered countless times at this airport. I?m redesigning the passenger experience, with a vision that goes beyond just the passengers themselves. It?s about expanding our thinking to include everyone - from passenger to visitor - and creating a new paradigm for airport travel that addresses the unique challenges of Vietnam

In Touch with Prairie Living, September 2023

September 2023 column for North Dakota and South Dakota newspapers

Pier Luigi Penzo: Football on Water and the Stadium Experience

The stadium experience is one that has evolved and been enjoyed for centuries. Stadium architecture, technology, and the sporting event itself has changed greatly yet many events tend to miss out on the atmospheric and experience potential. Stadium size has contributed to this as fans have started to feel alienated at events. Smaller market teams have especially missed out on this atmosphere as most designers assume capacity is the only contribution to a positive experience. This thesis will investigate how a stadium contributes to the overall sporting event experience, the community as a whole, and will attempt to create a list of design considerations that can be applied to existing and future venues with an emphasis on limited market clients. The design principles will be derived from historical and case study research of a variety of venues and experiences worldwide. The principles described will be implemented in the design of the Pier Luigi Penzo stadium in Venice, Italy. The Pier Luigi Penzo, like other successful venues, can stand as an example for how architecture can influence the stadium experience and contribute to communities in a positive fashion

Ranking Risk Factors in Financial Losses From Railroad Incidents: A Machine Learning Approach

Raj Bridgelall is the program director for the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute (UGPTI) Center for Surface Mobility Applications & Real-time Simulation environments (SMARTSeSM).The reported financial losses from railroad accidents since 2009 have been more than US$4.11?billion dollars. This considerable loss is a major concern for the industry, society, and the government. Therefore, identifying and ranking the factors that contribute to financial losses from railroad accidents would inform strategies to minimize them. To achieve that goal, this paper evaluates and compares the results of applying different non-parametric statistical and regression methods to 15?years of railroad Class I freight train accident data. The models compared are random forest, k-nearest neighbors, support vector machines, stochastic gradient boosting, extreme gradient boosting, and stepwise linear regression. The results indicate that these methods are all suitable for analyzing non-linear and heterogeneous railroad incident data. However, the extreme gradient boosting method provided the best performance. Therefore, the analysis used that model to identify and rank factors that contribute to financial losses, based on the gain percentage of the prediction accuracy. The number of derailed freight cars and the absence of territory signalization dominated as contributing factors in more than 57% and 20% of the accidents, respectively. Partial-dependence plots further explore the complex non-linear dependencies of each factor to better visualize and interpret the results.The authors express their deep gratitude to the following funding agencies? support: North Dakota State University and the Mountain-Plains Consortium (MPC), a University Transportation Center funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation under grant number DTRT13-G-UTC38.https://www.ugpti.org/about/staff/viewbio.php?id=7