Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, Art

This thesis demonstrate my artistic practice and research exploring empathy and human-machine interaction in projects involving robotic art and video installations and performance. The works investigate emotions and embodiment, presence and absence, relationships and loss, and ways to implicate these ideas in encounters between technology-based artwork and the viewer. This paper presents the framework of my practice, followed by descriptions, statements, and excerpts from my journal describing how, for both of my main projects developed during the past two years in the MFA program at The Ohio State University, I went through several numerous stages in which the projects were designed, tested and were modified as my new designs evolved, failed, and were modified. The purpose of this thesis is to show my process, to establish the continuum and consistency of my research and interests, and to expand on how my work relates to the traditions and discourse of new media art.

Committee: Ken Rinaldo (Advisor); Amy Youngs (Committee Member); Carmel Buckley (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

This thesis is a collection of essays titled A Gallery of Absence. These essays explore themes such as memory, absence, grief and tyranny through photography. The first essay, “Picturing Biafra”, chronicles the significance of photos of Biafran children in understanding the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70, and how children who didn't witness the war come to an understanding about the hardship faced by their parents. The titular essay, “A Gallery of Absence” meditates on death, absence and how grief could be a cruel, lonely process. “Picture of the Mind” and “An Image of Tyranny” both reflect on the generational impacts images of tyranny could have and how images could reflect power.

Committee: Daisy Hernandez (Committee Member); Pepper Stetler (Committee Member); TaraShea Nesbit (Advisor) Subjects: African Studies; Art Criticism; History; Sub Saharan Africa Studies

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Education, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Education and Human Services

This multi-site case study uses Policy Implementation Process Examination (PIPE) and a variegated diagram to represent the evolution of interpretations in a human sense-making framework as it relates to Ohio House Bill 410, legislated in 2016. The purpose of the research is to study how implementing agents such as school district personnel respond to legislation and carry out efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism while attending to local conditions. Because the COVID-19 pandemic occurred while this study was taking place, this study was able to include within its investigation how school district personnel responded to this crisis and changes in conditions during implementation. In examining the experiences of practitioners, the researcher is not seeking to prove or support a particular curriculum, school, model, or theory. Rather, this study seeks to draw on PIPE and theories of human sense-making to gain an understanding of the experiences and meaning district personnel give to policies enacted to reduce chronic absenteeism. The findings of the study may offer useful considerations for future policy-making in the area of chronic absenteeism and may contribute to theories of policy development and implementation.

Committee: Anne Galletta Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Joanne Goodell Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Selma Koc Ph.D. (Committee Member); Mark Freeman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jeffrey Snyder Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education History; Education Policy; Educational Technology

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2020, Leadership and Change

In the United States, cross-sector partnerships, a form of collaboration, are becoming increasingly common in practice (Gray & Purdy, 2018). However, questions remain regarding the effectiveness of these partnerships and if the many challenges of using them can be overcome. In particular, the intersection of cross-sector partnerships and power, which can deeply impact these partnerships, needs more attention. This study used interpretive phenomenology to understand, from the participant perspective, (a) the experience and construction of power, (b) the impact of power on participants, and (c) how power dynamics in these initiatives compare to dynamics in organizations. Seventeen participants from four homelessness-focused Collective Impact (CI) initiatives, a popular cross-sector partnership model, were interviewed about their experiences. In addition, I reviewed key documents about each initiative. Data was interpreted using a variety of theoretical lenses, including critical theory, as well as my own work experience in this area, and carefully analyzed through iterative re-engagement, reflexivity, and thematic analysis. The findings revealed that power presented in six different ways: resources, structures and processes, identity, resistance, formal leadership, and framing and communication. When examining the differences between collaborations, differences in these six areas, as well as the identity and ways of operating of the partner who began the partnership, seemed to influence the experience of power. Financial resources were a dominant form of power and provided some partners with disproportionate influence. Dominant partners were also able to stack power across these six areas. The impacts of power dynamics were largely negative. Other significant findings included that some partners did not experience power at all. Critical theory and positive framing may explain this outcome. I call for an expanded CI model with a sixth condition related to power. As par (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lize (A.E.) Booysen DBL (Committee Chair); Donna Ladkin PhD (Committee Member); Kirk Emerson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Public Administration; Public Policy; Social Psychology; Social Research

MFA, Kent State University, 2017, College of the Arts / School of Art

NOISE OF EYELIDS: THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE The noise of eyelids is not silent. The opening and closing is a strike upon the plane of perception, as if it were an ocular frieze of the present tense. It is the residue of what one experiences, whether implied or actualized, an emotionally charged layer of response and retention. I combine phenomenology, the concept of subjective interpretation of an event, with visual marks of how dreams and images of loss can be iterated and inferred. These are my visual expressions of personal loss and the emotional residue that offer oneiric and meditative openings in the sepulchral landscape. The past tense can be ritualized, but in my explorations, I hope the viewer can share with me the idea of contextualizing that which is absent, yet present and itinerant in frequenting all of one's senses. I have utilized two processes in my thesis work, photograms and fumage. Photograms are a photographic technique in which one uses light to directly transfer an image onto light sensitive paper, eliminating the camera and negative. The three-dimensionality of the subject matter is captured onto the paper and is then developed. I used my hair as a subject, which I manipulated by gestural movements. I chose to use my hair, because of the implications and significance hair has in our culture: the lioness full with fringe, the loss with illness, age and genetics, a keepsake of babies and loved ones. The second process I used is fumage, a technique developed by the Surrealists in 1936. By holding a sheet of paper above an open candle flame, one can catch layers of carbon, which is sensitive and vulnerable on cold press paper. I can then blow away the carbon and continue to manipulate the surface with erasure and additional marks. These layers of soot are indicative of how I experience loss as a landscape in which I visit to interpret emotions. Valerie Buynak M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition Center for Visual Arts, Kent State University, March 2 (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gianna Commito (Committee Chair); Darice Polo (Committee Co-Chair); Martin Ball (Committee Co-Chair); John-Michael Warner (Advisor) Subjects: Art Criticism

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Medicine: Neuroscience/Medical Science Scholars Interdisciplinary

Approximately 50 million people worldwide live with epilepsy and making this disease one of the most common neurological diseases worldwide. About 0.6 – 2 % of children aged 0-17 years have active epilepsy. Childhood epilepsy affects children at different ages and in many different ways; some seizures in childhood are not associated with a definite cause. The most common type of idiopathic focal epilepsy syndrome is Childhood Epilepsy with Centrotemporal Spikes (CECTS). CECTS is age-dependent and self-limited. CECTS was previously considered a `benign' epilepsy, because of the excellent seizure prognosis. However, there are increasing reports that children with CECTS exhibit various cognitive and behavioral problems. Recently, quantitative structural MRI analyses have shown that there is atypical cortical morphology in CECTS compared to typically developing children. However, the findings are often contradictory, which may be due to heterogenous study populations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare cortical thickness between drug-naive new onset CECTS patients and typically developing children, with careful inclusion criteria to promote homogeneity within groups and careful matching between. We also investigated the correlation with Processing Speed Index (PSI), which was significantly different between groups, and frequency of centrotemporal spikes (CTS) within regions of interest (ROIs). We did not find any cortical thickness differences between groups based on the whole brain analysis. We found a significant interaction between PSI and group in cortical thickness within the ROIs. There were positive correlations with PSI and cortical thickness in typically developing children, but no or negative correlation in CECTS. In addition, cortical thickness in right pars opercularis was thinner with higher frequency of right –sided CTS. These findings indicate that children with CECTS have atypical cortical features which may underlie poorer processing speed (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Steve Danzer Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Mekibib Altaye Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christina Gross Ph.D. (Committee Member); Darren Kadis Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jeffrey Tenney M.D. (Committee Member); Jennifer Vannest Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Neurology

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2018, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This thesis, written in English, offers a comparative analysis of communal trauma in the Post-Plantation fiction of Maryse Conde's Traversee de la Mangrove and William Faulkner's Light in August. More specifically, this piece of scholarship examines how traumas of absence, defined as those resulting from a missing experience rather than a lived one, construct communities through the acknowledgement of shared pain. By rejecting traditional narrative techniques, both authors tell the story of their fictional communities via what we call a communal recit, the totality of individual narratives collectively informing the reader's understanding of the particular community. In reading these individual recits alongside each other, the reader engages in a process we call Relational reading, which taking inspiration from Edouard Glissant's Poetics of Relation, is a method of identifying shared experiences within a literary work. This reading practice is made possible through Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of the rhizome and its advantages as a narrative device. For the reader, this style of narration yields topologies of the represented communities' thinking, thereby exposing how characters come to see themselves in relation to one another. Finally, this work considers literature's role as a functional monument to that which cannot be easily depicted.

Committee: Jonathan Strauss PhD (Advisor); Audrey Wasser PhD (Committee Member); Erin Edwards PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Caribbean Literature; Caribbean Studies; Comparative Literature; Literature

MFA, Kent State University, 2017, College of the Arts / School of Art

These are my visual expressions of personal loss and the emotional residue that offer oneiric and meditative openings in the sepulchral landscape.

Committee: Gianna Commito (Advisor); Darice Polo (Committee Member); Martin Ball (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Art/Art History

In 1862, Alexander Gardner captured some of the best-known photographs of the Civil War at Antietam. Since then his photographs have been part of a varied history cycling from open publicity to obscurity and back again. In recent years, photographers have turned to Gardner's photographs for inspiration when creating new photographs of the Civil War: rephotography. David Levene and Sally Mann are two examples that approach rephotography from different directions. Levene and Mann go to Antietam to photograph what the war left behind. The content of the photographs was analyzed to see what was present and what was not. The artists' intent was taken into consideration where possible. The photographs represent the Civil War through what is absent, through what is missing. Gardner's photographs depict the aftermath of the battle; Levene's highlight what is there no longer; Mann's explore the spectral traces that remain. They each commemorate Antietam while making September 17, 1862 more real for modern viewers.

Committee: Andrew Hershberger (Advisor); Rebecca Green (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Art History; Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Creative Writing/Poetry

ABSTRACT Committee: Sharona Muir, Advisor; Larissa Szporluk Serpent Something is a collection of poems that fuses experimental forms with traditional lyric in a hybrid attempt to problematize the uneasy relationship between ontology and language, representation, and photographic absence.

Committee: Sharona Muir (Advisor); Larissa Szporluk (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2016, Public Health

The high-risk, high-stress setting of prehospital care may lead to burnout among emergency medical services (EMS) professionals. Burnout is described as a depletion of physical and emotional resources resulting in exhaustion that can be attributed to an area of one's life such as work. In addition to being associated with a number of serious mental and physical health conditions, burnout has been linked with factors that can negatively impact the workforce. The objectives of this study were to describe the prevalence of burnout among nationally-certified Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and paramedics, identify characteristics associated with burnout and assess the association between burnout and factors that could impact the EMS workforce, namely anticipated turnover and sickness absence. This was a cross-sectional analysis of a random sample of nationally-certified EMTs and paramedics. The validated 19-item Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) was used to measure three dimensions of burnout: personal, work-related and patient-related. Multivariable logistic regression modelling was used to identify variables significantly associated with burnout. Lastly, multivariable logistic regression was used to assess the association between each dimension of burnout and anticipated turnover and sickness absence. A total of 2,650 (12.5%) responses were received. More paramedics experienced personal (38.5%), work-related (30.3%), and patient-related (14.2%) than EMTs (25.6%, 19.1%, and 5.2%). Paramedics (OR: 1.58, 95%CI: 1.25-2.00) and females (OR: 1.38, 95%CI: 1.11-1.71) had increased odds of personal burnout. Race/ethnicity and weekly call volume were also associated with personal burnout. EMS professionals with 5 to 15 years of experience had greater odds of work-related burnout than those with less than 5 years of experience (OR: 1.43, 95%CI: 1.07-1.90). Those working at private services demonstrated greater odds of work-related burnout than those at fire-based ser (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Susan Olivo-Marston PhD (Advisor); Julie Bower PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Public Health

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2015, English

My Mother's Missing Bees is a multi-genre project bound by the unifying theme of absence. Half short stories and half poetry, the work is driven by the image of a vacant beehive and its missing bees. The stories and poems all explore in some way the haunting presence of absence that this image evokes. Moving between, and sometimes blurring, the natural and human world, image plays a vital role in creating elements of tension and narrative throughout the work. The two parts and their subsequent stories and poems work together to present the reader with a cohesive narrative of absence.

Committee: Albino Carrillo M.F.A. (Advisor) Subjects: American Literature; Language; Literature

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2014, Art

This writing is an extension of my art practice. The material of the work becomes a different form through the writing in a book. I continue to explore the relationship between two. The artist becomes the writer and the viewer becomes the reader. Together we experience the process of making. I manipulate the physical and immaterial to make a tangible experience. I transcribe an audio recording of voices for the eyes. Through responsive movements, I create a score for two performers. The concept of my work mirrors the experience the reader has with the writer. There is a division between two. Both forms of work create a separation, yet a moment of togetherness. This shared moment is where the work exists.

Committee: Amy Youngs (Advisor); Ann Hamilton (Committee Member); Amanda Gluibizzi (Committee Member); Jeanine Thompson (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, Art

In my thesis work, I investigate the way memory functions, defining memory loosely to include events that we do not experience firsthand and people who we have never met but who are familiar to us. My work coalesces around photographic source imagery found in my family's old photo albums which catalogue happy occasions—birthdays, weddings, vacations. The images I use speak of a past era through hairstyles and clothing. Viewers, however, can glean precious little about the people pictured and the complexity of the relationships represented. I am interested in the way nostalgia may encourage us to forget that the past included tragedy and struggle in addition to joy, and I raise questions about how we see, remember, and imagine. I am interested in the way portraits, which are intended to give insight, often render their subjects more anonymous and generic by idealizing them. Through fragmentation, erasure, and redrawing I am considering what remains when people are absent. In some works I focus on the tangible elements and physical spaces that withstand time, as people cannot. In others I examine the ways memories emerge. I insert myself into photographs taken before I was born by reworking, recreating and altering the images I find in pages of albums. I strive to make visible an image that is truer than the one I found. Formally, I experiment with thick and thin, rough and smooth, solidity and fragility. Using ceramics, photographs and computer technology, I produce images vacillate between clarity and blurriness. I encourage the viewer to ask questions that can never be answered definitively.

Committee: Mary Jo Bole (Committee Chair); Tony Mendoza (Committee Member); Alison Crocetta (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2011, Counselor Education (Education)

This heuristic study involving seven coresearchers, which included the author, explores the experiences of women from mother-present/father-absent homes and their ability to form and maintain close female friendships. The heuristic research model was chosen to provide the opportunity to conduct research in a very personalized, collaborative way with my coresearchers. From our first meeting through the creative synthesis, it was vital to use a research model that honored the exploration of feelings with all their associated meanings. Little was found in the literature that paired father absence and women's ability to form close female friendships. The author wanted to discover if other women from mother-present/father-absent homes had challenges forming and maintaining close female friendships. Some of the coresearchers' experiences (our ability to form and maintain close female friendships, the effects from our fathers' absence, and the meaning we ascribed to these experiences) were substantiated by the literature, while others were not. Some information could not be examined because it could not be located in the literature. Six core essence themes (which contained 44 dominant themes) including: the satisfaction of close female friendships, obstacles faced in making close female friends, mother's influence also needs consideration, yearning for Daddy, and father behaving badly are explored in detail.

Committee: Tracy Leinbaugh PhD (Committee Chair); Peter Mather PhD (Committee Member); Yegan Pillay PhD (Committee Member); Gregory Janson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Counseling Education

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Psychology/Clinical

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether emotional eating occurs in preschoolers using a behavioral measure. Based on Macht's (2007) five-way model of how emotions affect eating behavior, it was hypothesized that some preschoolers would increase food intake due to moderate negative emotions. This study utilized an eating in the absence of hunger research paradigm to measure the difference in caloric intake between negative and neutral mood induction conditions. The current study also examined the relationship between emotional eating and parental feeding behaviors, own eating behaviors, and the child's emotion regulation skills. Thirty 4- to 6-year-old children and the parent most involved with feeding were recruited for this study. Emotional eating was not pervasive in this sample. However, there were noteworthy individual differences associated with consuming a greater amount of calories in the negative mood condition than in the neutral mood condition. Child self-report of emotional eating was more predictive of greater caloric intake in the negative mood condition than was parent-report of the child's emotional eating. In addition, individual differences in emotion regulation skills were more predictive of greater caloric intake in the negative mood condition than parents own eating and feeding behaviors. However, when parent report of emotional eating was used as the emotional eating outcome variable rather than the behavioral measure, parental feeding for emotion regulation was most predictive of greater caloric intake in the negative mood condition.

Committee: Dara Musher-Eizenman PhD (Committee Chair); Robert A. Carels PhD (Committee Member); William H. O'Brien PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Science (MS), Bowling Green State University, 2007, Chemistry

Estrogen receptor (ER) is a ligand-inducible enhancer protein that is a member of nuclear hormone receptor super family. Estrogen receptors share a highly conserved structure with other members of the steroid receptor super family and a common mechanism, regulating gene transcription. Estrogen receptors reside in the nucleus and in the absence of hormone signal bind to other proteins. However, in the presence of hormone, the receptor dissociates from the other proteins and dimerizes. The dimeric form of estrogen receptor is the active form which binds to a specific DNA sequence, known as the estrogen response element (ERE) in the regulatory region of the target gene. The estrogen response element (ERE) consists of asymmetric or pseudo asymmetric, palindromic repeat of two half-site sequences (cHERE) 5'-AGGTCA-3', separated by 3bps. HMG domain proteins are architectural proteins involved in chromatin function and have been shown to stabilize the ER/ERE binding. One aims of this thesis is to determine how differences in spacer length between the ERE half-site affect on ER binding affinity in the presence and absence of the coactivator protein, HMGB-1. The binding affinity and selectivity of the two forms of the estrogen receptor (a and a) and glucocorticoid receptor (GR) for cHERE, in three different orientations (direct repeats, inverted repeats and everted repeats) were studied by using the gel mobility shift assay (EMSA). ERs, in contrast to GR, showed a strong cooperativity when interacting with direct repeats, inverted repeats as well as everted repeats.

Committee: William Scovell (Advisor) Subjects: Chemistry, Biochemistry