Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2023, Educational Leadership

Over time, Lincoln Heights High School has seemingly been erased from history. With the exception of a Facebook group and a few articles about state championships that were won during its final year of operation, there is no information on the internet or in published books or research about the high school. This research project aims to fill the void in the literature about Lincoln Heights High School. Data for this project were collected through a combination of oral histories and archival documents to unpack the trials and triumphs of a school that aimed to provide a quality education for its students despite having insurmountable budget issues that inevitably led to its closure. The purpose of this research is to understand the unique case of Lincoln Heights High School as it was one of the few Black schools in Ohio. What were the experiences of Black educators who taught at Lincoln Heights High School? The teachers' narratives highlighted that the staff was more than willing to work with the limited resources that they had in an attempt to educate students and build community. From the archival documents, the main takeaway is that there were so many external forces attempting to hinder the Lincoln Heights community. The battles over land and industrial tax revenue caused Lincoln Heights to be a landlocked community without the opportunity of expanding or generating substantial tax dollars from industry. Gerrymandering was the legal method used to ensure that thriving communities around Lincoln Heights were able to create the hopeless situation for the largest all Black town in the United States. Policies are the reason for the dire situation that the Lincoln Heights community and high school found themselves in. These findings indicate the need for an analysis of school funding in Ohio. The funding model that Ohio utilizes has been deemed illegal, but the model still exists. This model is what also forced the closure of Lincoln Heights High School and con (open full item for complete abstract)

PHD, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Political Science

ABSTRACT THORNE-HAMILTON, AMBER, PH.D., MAY 2017 POLITICAL SCIENCE THE CINCINNATI COLLABORATIVE AGREEMENT PROCESS: DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AS A METHOD OF IMPROVING POLICE-COMMUNITY RELATIONS (329 PP.) Dissertation Advisor: Patrick G. Coy Over the past fifteen years across the United States, African-American communities have been protesting and even rioting about discriminatory policing practices and use of police force issues. Governments are seeking new ways to constructively address police-community conflicts and some are turning to deliberative democracy. In 2001, a riot in Cincinnati, Ohio in combination with a federal lawsuit spurred a deliberative democracy experiment that resulted in the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement Process involving thousands of citizens, the Cincinnati Police Department, the City of Cincinnati and local civil rights groups. This dissertation evaluates the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement Process as deliberative democratic practice. It also analyzes the success of the Collaborative Agreement Process in terms of improving policecommunity relations. Findings show that the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement Process deviates from the deliberative ideal in some ways but that the process also successfully influenced policing policies and practices and provided the public an inclusive and representative deliberative democracy practice. This detailed analysis of the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement Process contributes to the deliberative democracy literature by evaluating the soundness of the process using criteria from the literature. More important, it also evaluates the complex relationship between community support for the agreement and the long-term sustainability of this deliberative practice. This evaluation is significant because it outlines the areas of the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement Process that should be used as a model for other communities who wish to improve their police-community relations.

MCP, University of Cincinnati, 2010, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Community Planning

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) allocated approximately $8 billion to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for distribution to individual states on a competitive basis for the planning design and implementation of high-speed intercity passenger rail service. This represents the most significant expenditure by the federal government for the development of new passenger rail service in the post World War II period. The FRA has designated several corridors to receive prioritization for funding towards implementation of high-speed passenger rail service. Two of these corridors terminate in Cincinnati. One corridor links Cincinnati to Chicago via Indianapolis, while the second links Cincinnati to Cleveland via Columbus (3-C Corridor). The exact route, service parameters, station locations, as well as capital and operational costs have not been finalized for either corridor. In February 2010, the FRA awarded the Ohio Rail Development Commission (ORDC) $400 million for the implementation of “Quickstart” passenger service within the 3-C Corridor. The proposed “Quickstart” service would operate on a combination of existing fright railroads at a maximum speed of 79 mph starting in 2012. At the same time, planning and engineering would commence with the goal of establishing “high-speed” rail service which would operate at speeds up to 110 mph in the future. The ORDC application to the FRA designates a preferred location for the Cincinnati terminal station near Lunken Airport for “Quickstart” service and at the Cincinnati Union Terminal (CUT) for future high-speed rail service. Regional political leadership, print and electronic media, as well as many in the public at large, have stated that the Lunken station location should be discarded and that all efforts should be directed at the utilization of the CUT as the City of Cincinnati's rail terminal. To date, there have been few, if any, efforts evaluating the suitability of the CUT as a termina (open full item for complete abstract)

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

Listening is a basic and vital way people connect to each other and the spaces they inhabit. Dramatic and musical performances bring listening to the surface of perception, bringing performer and listener together in the space of performance. The complete separation of performance spaces from their context creates an artificial and potentially counterproductive separation between “music” and “everyday sound.” While indoor performance spaces are useful and convenient spaces for public performance, concert halls cannot replace or reproduce the experience of outdoor listening, and they do not need to do so. While there are many spaces for the presentation of theater, music, dance, and other modes of performance on the University of Cincinnati's campus, most of them are enclosed, conditioned, and shut off from the outside world. When made fully accesible and spatially inviting, spaces designed for gathering and performance can become special listening places at all times, whether a performance is happening or not. For this project, the ancient Greek theater will be used as a formal and conceptual precedent; its principles will be applied to a new physical and cultural context. The design of a an open-air performance space on UC's West Campus will serve as a way to explore the relationships between architecture, ambient sound, performance, and place while also addressing issues of site-specificity and public identity. The new performance space is proposed as an asset to the College-Conservatory of Music and the larger community. This thesis addresses relationships between sound, action, and place. ‘MainStage' is proposed as a complement to and extension of ‘MainStreet,' an already extant and vibrant pedestrian corridor on UC Campus. The goal of MainStage is to provide a place for formal and informal gathering, performance and listening, hopefully serving to stimulate UC's community and culture in the process.

MCP, University of Cincinnati, 2003, Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning : Community Planning

A growing body of literature has emerged in recent years examining the feasibility and desirability of economic mixing on a residential basis (Brophy and Smith 1997, Rosenbaum et al. 1998) but little attention has been to the feasibility of this mixing when it involves middle-class families with children. This paper examines school-housing linkages as part of HOPE VI public housing revitalization at City West (Cincinnati, Ohio) and Park DuValle (Louisville, Kentucky). Overall, the study highlights the difficulty of achieving mixing of children from lower- and middle-income homes in schools serving public housing revitalization sites. HOPE VI planners in both cities placed little or no emphasis on attracting of middle-income families with children. Instead, officials emphasized income mixing and improved homeownership opportunities for low and moderate income families. Overall there has been closer housing-schooling cooperation in Louisville than in Cincinnati. Jefferson County Public Schools was highly involved from the start of the HOPE VI application process because the school system had been involved in an earlier Empowerment Zone application. While Cincinnati Public Schools was not involved at all in the early plans for City West, it became involved during the implementation phase because CPS was conducting its own facilities master planning process. While Park DuValle has attracted many middle-income families with children, all of the middle-income families moving into City West have been childless. Park DuValle's success is largely due to the fact that Louisville's schools are part of a county-wide school system based on busing. Unlike other cities, families considering moving to Park DuValle are not influenced by perceptions of neighborhood school quality; they know that their children will be bused to a school outside the neighborhood. Because Louisville's countywide school system is so unique among American cities, it may be difficult to replicate Louisvill (open full item for complete abstract)

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2002, Arts and Sciences : Geology

An engineering geology study of chronic landsliding on a 168-acre hillslope on the western side of Mill Creek Valley in Price Hill, Cincinnati, Ohio finds that most of the landsliding can be associated with past land use initiated over the last 195 years. The majority of the hillside has moved or is in quasi-equilibrium from human activity. Historic quarry operations, deforestation, clear cutting, grading for housing (both historic and ongoing), road construction, loading of the slope from dumping (landfill, construction debris, etc), and modification of the natural hydrology have set the stage for past and ongoing destabilization of the hillside. Research of past land use patterns and examination of historic photographs, maps, newspaper accounts, directories, and books complemented mapping of human landforms, instability features, and surface water drainage. The majority of the study data was collected in the field however; historical documentation revealed landsliding and/or preexisting human made features that today would not be recognized in a traditional field investigation. Additionally, some of the landforms identified in the study area could be validated as landslide or human made features by examination of the historical data. Examination of the historic record and past human landforms that at present may be completely or partially indistinct gives a different perspective on the extent of hillside instability. A stake survey combined with inclinometers may be necessary to delineate the true extent of ground movement in areas absent of human made earthen landform, structure, or lacking historical data, especially on the lower portions of the hillslope where the overburden thickens. Thorough examination of the historic record in conjunction with a careful field study of the amount of hillside disturbance and movement allows the public and professionals to make prudent decisions on future hillside use and development. Further, Geographical Information Systems (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2013, English (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis addresses how setting and character in short stories can affect and reflect one another. Does place function as more than a location where plot occurs? How does it become a part of the characters themselves? Three short stories, “Babylon Revisited,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” by Ernest Hemingway, and “Where I'm Calling From,” by Raymond Carver, are analyzed for their abilities to successfully link aspects of their settings to the qualities of characters. The essay finds that place is most effective when it influences the characters while also reflecting their emotional and mental status. Three original short stories by the author are then presented as attempts to consider the relationship between setting and character.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Master of Landscape Architecture, The Ohio State University, 1989, Graduate School

MCP, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Community Planning

Proposed improvements to the US Environmental Protection Agency's Lead and Copper Rule would require all cities to remove their lead service lines (LSLs) in the next ten years. A persistent challenge that water system managers face is that homeowners refuse to have their LSL replaced despite the health consequences. Cincinnati, OH faces similar challenges, but Greater Cincinnati Water Works (GCWW) has removed over 5,000 LSLs since 2016 by offering various incentives to homeowners. This study focuses on a byproduct of GCWW's LSL replacement program: the positive effect of the LSL replacement on property values. Through a difference-in-differences approach, which compared the GCWW customers who replaced their LSL from 2016 to 2021 versus those customers without an LSL replacement, it was determined that the LSL replacement causes a 4.6 percent increase in home sale price in the three years after the replacement. This study is the first to look at how the Flint crisis affected the value of LSL replacement in another city and is an opportunity for water system managers to convey another “incentive” for LSL replacement.

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

What does the Land of Cedar mean? The Cedars of Lebanon, mentioned in the Bible, refer to aromatic and durable wood that was highly sought after for construction in Iron Age Israel. David used it to build his palace (2 Sam 5:11; 1 Chr 17:1), and Solomon used it in the construction of the temple and his own palace (2 Chr 2:3-8). Cedar is one of the most important Native American ceremonial plants, used by many tribes as an incense and purifying herb. The thesis is based on promoting purified and healthier living for the "People," as cedar is associated with prayer, healing, dreams, and protection against diseases. Architecture has evolved immensely, incorporating great technology, style, and aesthetics. However, a growing emphasis is on creating more liveable, socially conscious, and environmentally progressive spaces. The thesis aims to create a “landmark for the Cincinnati Skyline.” It will have a facade that takes the form of vertical living spaces incorporating residences that are more connected with nature. The goal is to create a space that is more social and interactive. Keeping in mind the concept of cedar. The construction will incorporate a blend of natural materials such as "Western Red Cedar" for interior spaces due to its natural beauty and aesthetic appeal and "CLT" for the outer core of the structure due to its strength, toughness, lightweight nature, and good performance during an earthquake. Within the contents of the thesis, one will find a living space that integrates with nature amidst the Cincinnati skyline, facing the southern side of the Ohio River. It showcases a combination of materials and provides valuable insight into the necessity of such structures to harmonize with the environment. In this rapidly changing world, the space that comforts us the most is "home." With the onset of Covid-19, working from home has become a global trend. It is now essential to create a healthier and more socially active space for people w (open full item for complete abstract)

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

You've likely heard the term “work hard, play harder,” often told by a parent when a child fusses about homework or chores. But in the case of our newest generations, their work is achieved through play. A child's work relates to one of the most important factors in how a child develops, thus putting an important emphasis on the act. The words “play” and “growth” themselves were found to have more than a singular meaning in this paper. As a theory, “play” is defined by Huizinga as “A free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary' life as being ‘not serious,' but at the same time absorbing the player intensely.” ¹ Architecturally, play is defined as a space, often with bold colors and gestures, that fosters growth through risky forms, multi-use objects and gathering spaces used as a basis for cultivating communication. In relation, “growth” in theory can be understood as the steps taken towards a goal, and the achievement of said goal. Growth architecturally means the increase of quantity or quality of a space or person in order to foster a better future. For the primary inhabitants, children, the architecture and playscape will feature how the interior and exterior play could help to grow the child's imagination and motor skills by allowing many of the elements we consider to be unfavorable, such as risk, back into the equation. For the secondary inhabitants, student parents, the growth aspect of the thesis will be introducing a system to better grow their minds and futures through the access to secondary education programs, while supporting their most crucial role, being a parent. Under the program Cincinnati Scholar House, temporary housing for single mothers will be allotted on the upper floors, thus creating a mixed-use support hub for the community. This intersection between child and adult allows for a modern take on the nuclear family, as well the addition of an architecture typology for the University of Cincinnat (open full item for complete abstract)

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Industrial facilities were constructed for specific production processes which guided the design and use of the buildings. The architecture of these industrial works reflects these processes through its scale. In recent years, these buildings have fallen into disrepair and disuse. Often, the buildings are icons of their neighborhood due to their longstanding role in the community's culture and economics. Landmarks like this should be preserved for the community's future. This architectural thesis looks at how the process of adaptive reuse and preservation can re-scale industrial architecture for new use. In so doing, the design will study what the architectural response should be to the existing building to both respect the existing structure and redesign it for human interaction. This thesis uses a case study of the Lunkenheimer Foundry in South Fairmount, a neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio to understand both the existing industrial component and to propose a design for the future which inhabits the existing structure. The study is split into five parts. The first part overviews preservation, reuse, and what the theoretical response to both has been in the past. The second part gives information on both the industrial scale and the human scale and why each scale is designed. The third part introduces what the architectural response to reuse has been and strategies to use in design moving forward. The fourth part analyzes the site and existing building for design opportunity. Finally, the fifth part discusses how the design proposal connects to the existing structure. The resulting design proposal opens up the building for pedestrian inhabitation as strategic interventions float within the heavy existing structure to create architectural juxtaposition between the old and the new. The design shows that the proper architectural response to reusing industrial buildings is that which respects the original, allowing it to age in its own right, but adds new work do (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, History (Arts and Sciences)

This paper examines the antislavery stance of Catholic Archbishop of Cincinnati John Baptist Purcell and his brother, Father Edward Purcell, during the American Civil War. Purcell is an anomaly in that he advocated for the immediate end of slavery when most prominent Catholics did not. This study situates Purcell in state, national, Catholic, political, and social contexts, and shows how Purcell's thoughts on slavery developed in the antebellum and Civil War years. Purcell developed a distinctly Catholic antislavery position that drew from Catholic theology and experience. He received much criticism from other prominent Catholic persons and publications for his stance. This study examines the debates between Purcell and his critics and discusses their impact on the ecclesial unity of the Catholic Church in the United States.

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Rebuilding a community entails working with our neighbors, experiencing a sense of belonging, making sustainable communities, and being a part of a culture that matters to us and cares about us. This is a local action. Sociologist Robert Bellah in his book Habits of the Heart mentions how American Individualism has become unbalanced, creating a culture of separation and causing loneliness. If this is not addressed society will “collapse of its own incoherence.” When considered as a component of a wider system, our accepted culture, societal norms, and regulations contribute to feelings of isolation. American culture for housing more accurately reflects the aspirations of the mid-nineteenth century than the realities of the late twentieth century. This outdated design of suburban single-family housing is an underlying reason for housing scarcity. While the detached single-family home and the ideal of individualism are still strongly ingrained in American culture, shifting circumstances are making many people wonder if these aspects of the American dream should still be prioritized. A potential remedy for sustainable societies, isolation, loneliness and housing shortage is shared housing, an older but increasingly popular housing type. However, co-living is a new concept that has become generally accepted throughout the global housing industry in recent years. Depending on the setting and function, co-living takes various forms. Co-living is categorized as unrelated people living together. It is a residential community model that accommodates three or more biologically unrelated people living in the same dwelling unit, facilitated by a professional host. Urban Co-Living reflects the aspects of co-housing by centering dwellings around communities in which the inhabitants gather and create social interactions. The focus on social sustainability brings the user to the center of the design in terms of functionality, comfort, and accessibility. (open full item for complete abstract)

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Urban spaces contain layers of development in a city's quest for evolution and expansion, however, perceived triumphs of development such as highways have created downfalls in cities' structures and history. Highway systems are an infrastructure that threads cities and states in an accessible line of transportation. Suburban communities have gained direct access to cities at the cost of urban communities being severed from the urban core. While interstates are integral to the vitality of a city's success, there are opportunities to reevaluate the form of interstates to minimize the divide created by their location and structure. One of these opportunities is to utilize interstate capping, building over interstates in order to expand the development potential of cities and help to positively affect these severed communities. In the process of investigating highway capping, the West End of Cincinnati will be analyzed in order to find opportune locations existing in the layout of I-75 and I-71 to be able to locate caps that would have the most impact. Along with analyzing this portion of the city, it is important to analyze the history of the neighborhood and its history of being undervalued by local government and city planners. Through this experiment, there is an opportunity to bring a positive effect to the West End community and help to mend the residual disappointment leaders and planners have inflicted on the community. Evaluating the current infrastructure can also allow for Downtown to expand, breaking through the current gridlock confines. With the proposed design, highway capping can create positive, sustainable, public spaces that can rebuild areas of neighborhoods that have been lost due to the creation of the highway and allow for city centers to expand.

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

The translation of both product and production into manufactory space offers a unique opportunity for material and form in architecture. Research into the history of industry and production shows that manufactories are well-suited to product-based design. Light manufacturing types are confined to a single site with little to no emissions, this offers the greatest chance to foster design driven by the art of production. The local Cincinnati company, Rookwood Pottery, is one such manufactory. Their collaboration with the Guastavino Company made Rookwood architectural tile into a successful product used throughout the United States. The Guastavino vaulting technique, also referred to as Catalan or timbrel vaulting, allows thin masonry spans to be constructed without the use of supporting framework. Widely used on the coasts of Spain and Italy, the method was brought to America, though the technique is little known today. This thesis documents the history of the timbrel vault and its relationship with both industrial and contemporary space. By analyzing case studies and contemporary precedents, timbrel vaulting demonstrates the refreshing feasibility of expressive cohesive construction greatly benefitted by low embodied energy. The intention is to build with structural masonry spans, reintroducing the traditional craft aided by contemporary technology, within a program that fosters product-based design. A new facility for Rookwood Pottery demonstrates the recognized viability of timbrel vaulting in contemporary architecture.

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2022, History

My graduate thesis project is a museum exhibit on display through the end of May 2022 at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio which explores the ways in which the newspaper industry in Cincinnati fostered a toxic environment for racial relations in the antebellum era. Editors not only stoked racial tensions to encourage the riots that occurred in 1829, 1836, and 1841, they also shaped the narratives of the riots in their columns to blame the victims and exonerate the perpetrators. What follows is a brief history of the riots, the historiographical research pertaining to the exhibit, and an exploration of the methodological questions I faced when constructing the exhibit.

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Observance of downtown Cincinnati's urban makeup has led to an investigation of the density between the eastern and western urban cores. Western Cincinnati neighborhoods have been through an ongoing separation and isolation due to multiple infrastructural developments throughout the years including the Cincinnati Southern Railway and Interstate 75. A desire to reconnect western Cincinnati with the downtown core has led to the investigation of the 8th Street that spans from west to east crossing over the Mill Creek and Cincinnati Southern Railway by the means of a viaduct that continues into downtown Cincinnati. Observation of the 8th Street Viaduct and surrounding area revealed the potential of the viaduct and the underdeveloped land adjacent. The goal of the thesis project is to populate the 8th Street Viaduct architecturally and realize its potential as the western entry into downtown Cincinnati. Surrounding the 8th Street Viaduct is a barren manufacturing zone ripe with overgrowth of nature and the Mill Creek. The architectural response has the opportunity not only to provide development along an opportunity rich street front, but also practice biophilia by encouraging access and celebration of the natural phenomena present in the area.

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2022, College-Conservatory of Music: Organ

Covenant-First Presbyterian Church (Cincinnati, Ohio) is the successor congregation to eight historic, downtown Presbyterian churches. These churches all used organs for worship and an exploration of the purchase, upkeep, and function of these instruments provides a case study into historic American organ building in Presbyterian circles in the Midwest. In addition, several of these organs were unique among Cincinnati organs. All, save one, have since been destroyed and these records provide the only known information about the instruments. In 1837, Second Presbyterian purchased what was likely the first multi-manual organ in Cincinnati from the Cambridge, Massachusetts firm of Stevens & Gayetty. This instrument is one of only two organs that were shipped to Cincinnati from the east coast in the early nineteenth century and was an early use of the organ in Presbyterian worship in the Midwest, revealing the progressive musical tastes of the congregation. After completing a new building in 1875, Second Presbyterian installed what was likely one of the largest (possibly the largest) instrument built by the Cincinnati firm Koehnken & Co., an important and undervalued builder working in a German Romantic tradition and not in the British tradition of most contemporary east coast builders. Church of the Covenant, the successor congregation to Second Presbyterian, replaced the Koehnken in 1915 with the then largest Austin Organ (Hartford, Connecticut) in the area. Church of the Covenant was one of the largest and most prominent Presbyterian churches in the country during the early twentieth century. The Austin was renovated in the 1970s by Charles Hildreth, a member of the congregation. In addition, five other downtown congregations eventually merged into the church known today at Covenant-First. First Presbyterian, the mother church of Second, was an Old School Presbyterian church and had more conservative musical views. Despite concerns about the propriety (open full item for complete abstract)