Weight training practices and perspectives among cadet women at a senior military college

Weight training (WT) has been consistently shown to improve muscular ability among women, better preparing them to meet the demands of modern military service and overcome certain physiological challenges. Unfortunately, current training methods do not prioritize WT in most military populations, and women typically participate in WT at rates 20-30% lower than their male peers. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that influence WT participation among cadet women enrolled at a senior military college (SMC) to inform future programming, curriculum, facilities, or policies. First, a survey was administered to cadet women (n = 92) to characterize their WT participation and perceptions. Then, cadet women (n = 11) were interviewed to explore their perspectives on barriers, facilitators, and strategies for participation. Although WT is not often featured in twice per week institute-led physical training, 77% of cadet women reported participating in WT at least 2 days/wk and 49% reported = 3 days/wk. Athletes and women who planned to pursue military service after graduation reported higher rates of WT. Analysis of the interviews illuminated three themes: building reputation, “it’s on multiple fronts,” and “having to adapt.” WT was valued to support military readiness and build reputation in a male-dominated sphere emphasizing physicality. Cadet women’s perceived competence and strength were tied to reputation concerns. Time and space constraints included high academic course loads and extracurricular responsibilities associated with SMCs, coupled with limited facilities and equipment. Based on the views of cadet women in this study and low reported enrollment of women in current WT offerings, it is recommended that the institution provide additional educational resources and opportunities (e.g., workshops or women-only courses) as early as possible in a cadetship

One work : a rhizomatic treatise on the creative act

This work is a phenomenological and formal investigation into the tensions between the human tendency toward creativity and the institutional structures that control how that work is shared, including museums, galleries, public-art-funding government, social media, and the Academy. It is common for artists to be expected to work between assignments or bodies of work, as it were—artifacts of a creative process with a beginning, middle, and end. In this model, the initial goal is to execute an idea, and the final goal is to publicly display the work when it is finished, often to exchange it for capital. I propose a different model, where one’s artistic life is devoted to the experience of inquiry and experimentation, where artifacts may become secondary to the process, and where the art objects are tools as much as the media that may have made them. These objects are impermanent manifestations of inquiry and may become assembled and disassembled without heartbreak or fuss, always in service to the process of learning. I find points of intersection and departure between my own multiple modalities as an artist, thinker, and educator and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, particularly as they address the concepts of, assemblage, multiplicity, repetition, accumulation, and ritual, and their metaphor for non-hierarchy, the rhizome. In a rhizomatic structure, all points connect through nodes, but removing a node doesn’t destroy the connectivity of every other node. In contrast to arboreal thinking, rhizomatic thinking tends toward weighing the connections between things as more powerful than the things themselves

Stereoselective lactone synthesis via chiral Brønsted acid catalysis

Molecular chirality plays a key role in chemical and biological reactivity of molecules. The handedness of a particular molecule, for example, can have drastic effects on its biological or pharmaceutical properties. Synthesis of stereoenriched chiral molecules is challenging, especially molecules containing all-carbon quaternary centers. Desymmetrizations are a method that takes advantage of a prochiral moiety to generate stereoenriched compounds without the drawbacks of other classical asymmetric methods. Lactones are synthetically important target moieties, as they are replete throughout natural products and biological chemistry spaces. Indeed, chiral lactones are key to the functioning of several bioactive molecules, including molecules with anti-cancer activity. Methods for the synthesis of chiral lactones, then, present an important challenge for synthetic chemists. This work builds on previous methods for the synthesis of chiral lactones via desymmetrizations. It introduces new stereoselective uses for known reactions, and builds on methodology to develop a cascade reaction that streamlines our synthetic pathway. Finally, this work delineates a new co-catalytic cascade desymmetrization enhances the rescues the reactivity of chiral phosphoric acid catalysts. These methods add new tools in the synthetic chemist’s toolbox for synthesis of chiral molecules, and particularly chiral lactones

Expectations of women : trait inferences, nonverbal cues, and their impact on women’s underrepresentation in leadership

Women encounter a variety of obstacles when striving for leadership over the course of their careers. These obstacles can take the form of gendered trait expectations of how women and leaders “should” behave – expectations that often clash with one another. Trait inferences from facial cues (often out of women’s control) have also been shown to affect evaluations and impressions of women when striving for leadership. Appearance expectations of what a good leader “should” look like may also clash with women’s appearance and femininity in general. By identifying factors that contribute to people’s impressions and evaluations of women based on differing sexually dimorphic facial features, the current program of research adds to our understanding of how women can hopefully successfully navigate these obstacles. Indeed, work from this dissertation also reveals how nonverbal cues influence perceptions of women and highlight the factors that majorly impact job selections. The present work hopefully illuminates how women are impacted from these cues throughout their careers as they strive for positions of authority

Supporting transgender students in higher education classrooms

Trans people make up about 0.53% of the population or more. Many of these individuals, particularly in the higher education classroom setting, do not feel supported and are subject to discrimination and oppression. Many faculty are not up to date on terminology or ways to be trans-inclusive in the classroom. Studies show that professional development can be a useful technique in the learning and development (PD) of faculty in being more trans-inclusive in their classrooms. Utilizing Queer Theory, this disquisition examines faculty at Southeastern Valley Community College and their trans-inclusiveness before and after a PD that was developed based on the Transgender Inclusive Behavior Scale (TIBS) and the experiences of trans graduates of the institution. This research showed an improvement in the TIBS scores after the PD, as well as increased trans-inclusive behaviors in the classroom as a result

Framing protests in Peru : the resistance to terruqueo on Twitter during Dina Boluarte’s presidency, 2022-2023

This thesis investigates how everyday people responded to the frames deployed by Peruvian elites during the protests against Dina Boluarte’s presidency at the end of 2022 and beginning of 2023, with a particular focus on the reaction to terruqueo. This frame, utilized by economic and political elites, government agents and mass media, aims to demobilize, criminalize, and delegitimize protests by invoking the collective memory of the Peruvian internal warfare (1980-2000) to portrait protesters as violent. Through the analysis of Twitter replies to posts from the accounts of congressmen, La Republica and El Comercio newspapers, and government agencies, the content analysis reveals that terruqueo functioned as a counterframe, an official frame and a media frame during the protests. In that sense, everyday people resisted to terruqueo in two ways: by drawing upon elements of collective memory to redirect blame towards politicians, media and government agents; and by questioning the broader use of the frame, including its inconsistencies and efficacy in demobilizing people. The finding of this study suggests a more dynamic outlook on social mobilization in Peru highlighting the agency of everyday people in challenging elites’ narratives

Beceasing : onto-pedagogical dis-integration

This project concerns pedagogy and ontology and lies at the intersection of a deep study of two figures, two texts: Calvin Warren’s nihilism/Ontological Terror and Plato’s idealism/Republic. I notice in these works the presence of guardian—which is to say, following the Greek, phulaks—figures. The phulakes of Plato’s Republic, as the philosopher enlists them, find themselves bound to serve and protect the wall being, the boundary between what is and what is not. As such, following Warren, the work that these phulakes do is fundamentally antiblack, inasmuch as it is fundamentally anti-what-is-not. Throughout these pages, I suggest that phulakes as such linger into the contemporary era, at the very least as ‘humans,’ following Warren, and, following Plato and how he introduces them, as onto-pedagogues and onto-mythagogues. I admit this problematic tendency in my self: I am a teacher, I am a storyteller, I am a phulaks figure. And as far as I can tell, I can’t not be. Both Plato and Warren point to and through this ontological deadlock, an ontometaphysically concretized world and inescapably human way of moving in and viewing the world. Humans, pedagogues, storytellers, and phulakes do not have a choice as to whether or not they and their work reifies ontological antiblackness, only how. How am I to respond to this lock, this boundary? I set up this problem that does not have a solution and write as a practice of sitting with the tension that such a conundrum engenders. As the project proceeds, the personal emerges (this project is about ‘me’)—throughout my life, I have noticed patterns regarding how pedagogical and mythagogical figures have pointed me in relation to this antiblack wall and law of being that there is no getting beyond, for me. I wonder, then, in this world full of figures that tell me that I am, and that I become, what might it mean if I admit to my self that I am simultaneously ceasing to be

Effects of economic pressure and social support on parental depression and Head Start children’s behavioral problems

The importance of Head Start cannot be understated. This federal program, created out of necessity to address the disparities found in low-income families, has greatly expanded their focus to include the families of the attending children. As low-income families face many stressors, this study seeks to examine how social support could buffer parents from experiencing depression and how it may buffer children from experiencing externalizing behavioral problems. This study aimed to look at the association between parental depression and the interaction of economic pressure by total social support. I hypothesized that parents who live under conditions of high economic pressure and experience higher levels of social support will report lower levels of depressive symptoms. I further expect that children living in the same conditions will experience lower levels of externalizing behavioral problems. This study was conducted as a secondary analysis using a sample (n = 156) children attending Head Start and (n = 134) of their caregivers. Pearson correlations and linear regression models were used in order to test the hypothesis. I created an interaction variable of economic pressure and total social support to test our hypothesis. Results indicated that high economic pressure is associated with higher parental depression, while higher social support was associated with lower parental depression. The interaction between economic pressure and social support, unexpectedly, was not significant. Additionally, child externalizing behavioral problems was not predicted by economic pressure or social support or their interaction. These results highlight the importance of social support and further contributes to the growing literature on Head Start families

"Sticky and complicated": Towards removing inequity in academic program design

The researchers believe that post-secondary education can provide a greater number of Black students with degrees in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Using improvement science, this research aims to test whether providing scaffolded learning and awareness modules around success in STEM programs for faculty and staff can improve curricular design efforts and influence how a cohort discusses and addresses curricular complexity discussions. Black student success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math programs in Colleges and Universities has lagged behind White students despite decades of efforts by philanthropy and the U.S. Government. The research used a mixed-methods approach with a pre-/post-survey and a pulse survey, but it leans toward qualitative methods, using discussion boards, interviews, and class discussions. We also used the improvement science framework to test our intervention. We believe the improvement science methodology of faster cycles provides a better way to test ideas and ensures that there are multiple measures for the process along the way.The results are promising. The participants’ discussion patterns shifted from the beginning to the end of the intervention, so their discussions became about what they could do to address issues affecting Black student success in their institutions instead of what their institutions should do.The findings show that this is a complex issue that is changing rapidly at the local and national levels. While there are language issues, the academy participants are already addressing these so that their work focuses on "all" students instead of using Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion language. In addition to the language, data disaggregation is critical to identifying subpopulations within the larger group that might need nuanced support.This study offers recommendations on how education leaders can increase an equity lens on curricular complexity work at their institution by scaffolding and integrating learning for faculty, staff, and administrators involved in student learning. The recommendations for next research areas are around considering language - it will be interesting to see how the shift towards “all” students helps or hurts sub-population success with the shift away from social consciousness that was heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Political and social issues are also always moving, which affect both language. The undercurrent in creating change at an institution to increase student success for different sub-populations, Black students in particular, is creating awareness about an institutions implicit biases, which is essential across campus and in a review of policies and practices. A third recommendation includes data-informed decision-making. Becoming more data-informed in decision-making goes beyond the Institutional Research office creating reports and publishing them on a website or creating a dashboard; it includes training and use of data to support faculty and staff to do their own analysis and understand who is at the institution and how they can support those students. Data-informed decision-making means allowing institutions to disaggregate their data to have transparent discussions about who is succeeding or not succeeding at their institution and not leaving data questions only in the hands of some at the institution

Discoveries for wellbeing in and with the Project EXPLORE community

Project EXPLORE (PEX) is a nature-based learning (NBL) program designed by the NC Arboretum to help North Carolina K–12 teachers implement community or citizen science-based curricula in their classrooms. Teachers in the program receive materials and on-site coaching to facilitate the NBL curricula. PEX and similar programs are part of ongoing efforts to reconnect youth with the natural environment through formal curriculum initiatives (Jordan & Chawla, 2019; Williams & Dixon, 2013). Despite successes, many real and perceived barriers prevent the broader adoption of nature-based learning (NBL) in public education systems (Oberle et al., 2021; Waite, 2020). Teachers’ lack of confidence has been identified as critical to mainstream implementation (Jordan & Chawla, 2019). Furthermore, classroom stress and teacher attrition are symptoms of a crisis in teacher wellbeing, factors that negatively impact students (Lever et al., 2017). This study queries whether eacher stress and burnout may be mitigated by the same positive outcomes of NBL that students experience—like improved student-teacher relationships (Toropova et al., 2021), emotional regulation (Williams & Dixon, 2013), and enhanced motivation (Dettweiler et al., 2017). Few studies take teachers’ wellbeing or their perceptions of nature-based stress management into account. This study considers whether more teachers might incorporate NBL practices if we promoted outdoor education as much for teachers’ wellbeing as for students’. The purpose of this study is to explore how participating in PEX impacts teachers’ “wellbeing.” We specifically investigate how participating in Project EXPLORE impacts teacher wellbeing and what Project EXPLORE experiences teachers associate with their sense of wellbeing. Informed by critical feminist theory, we used an amended two-part collective memory work (CMW) design. The collaborative process of CMW centers individual experience and reality while locating these within societal and cultural contexts (Johnson, 2018). We invited all 200+ former PEX participants to share a short video narrative about a memory of the program’s impact on their wellbeing. Three teachers responded with videos and chose to participate as co-researchers in the focus group. As with traditional CMW, co-researchers analyzed the video diary entries for meaning. The group discussed ways PEX supported identity development, self-actualization, student-teacher relationships, and importantly, was a powerful tool for self-liberation within a neoliberal school context. The co-researchers elected for the results to be presented in a short video format