Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2013, Philosophy, Applied

Many ethical theories depend on the existence of natural teleology as a source of normativity. Natural Teleology, the purposive goal-directedness of non-conscious biological processes, is also embraced to some degree by a majority of philosophers of biology who agree that the teleological concepts of purpose, goal, defect, proper function and malfunction are legitimate, perhaps necessary, in biological explanations. In my dissertation I provide a substantive argument against the reduction of teleology to natural facts and argue that ethical theories that rely on it cannot be naturalistic. Several ethical theories could be my target, but I focus on the most overt example: neo-Aristotelian ethics. The project is in two sections, one in ethical theory and the other in philosophy of biology. In the first section of the dissertation, primarily using Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson as models, I illustrate how Neo-Aristotelian theories rest on natural teleology. I offer a metaethical analysis of teleology, arguing that it does not belong to the good nor the right nor mere description, but rather the proper. I call this category of concept protonormativity. I claim that protonormativity, of which teleology is a paradigmatic example, does not yield normative facts and is not reducible to natural facts; it is a distinct conceptual category. In the second section I give a novel argument for why natural teleology cannot be reduced to natural facts. Teleological concepts such as design and proper function imply standards of correctness for phenotypic outcome. They entail norms for the way an item is to be in the end: functional or malfunctional, good or defective. However, since a phenotype is the result of a genotype in some set of environmental conditions, there can only be a proper phenotype if there exists a proper environment for the item to inhabit. Regarding artifacts, a designer is capable of setting a proper environment, but I argue science does not admit of pro (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), University of Findlay, 2026, Education

This study examined the effectiveness of Class-wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT), a group contingency intervention designed to improve student behavior and increase teacher praise while reducing reprimands. Two types of CW-FIT games are the Good Behavior Game (GBG) and the Caught Being Good Game (CBGG). CW-FIT includes teaching appropriate behaviors, increasing teacher praise, reducing attention to inappropriate behaviors, and rewarding student teams for meeting behavioral goals. The intervention has been shown to enhance student engagement and on-task behaviors and reduce disruptive behaviors. The goal of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the two CW-FIT games' effects on students' academically engaged behavior and disruptive behavior. The hypothesis was that CW-FIT games would increase student on-task behaviors and decrease disruptive behaviors. The meta-analysis included 21 studies, primarily single-case designs conducted in preschool through 7th grade regular education classrooms. Results revealed overall significant effects of both the GBG and the CBGG on increasing student academically engaged behaviors (g = 1.88) and reducing disruptive behaviors (g = -2.01). These findings confirm both CW-FIT games as effective interventions for improving student behavior. The study concludes that CW-FIT is an evidence-based practice with strong support. Future research should assess study quality and explore variations across different settings

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Bioethics

From Aristotle to Engelhardt, philosophers and ethicists have struggled to find epistemic justification for a single set of provable and canonical content-full ethics to guide the moral decision making of the individual and nation-state alike. Where those such as Beauchamp and Childress in their account of Principlism presume something of a Rawlsian ‘common morality,' others such as H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. argue that we may not take for granted even the simplest of presumptions regarding good and right moral action without either begging the question, arbitrarily affirming a particular point of departure, or invoking an infinite regress (Engelhardt ix, Beauchamp and Childress 3-5, 444-457). Herein, I aim to accomplish two purposes. First, I mean to call out the elephant in the room: If there is no God; if there is no creator or creators; if there is no higher transcendent purpose or meaning behind existence or ultimate judgement for our actions, then truly there is no absolute right or wrong. The Enlightenment Project has failed, and will necessarily fail to find a single set of provable canonical content-full ethics (Engelhardt vii). Second, I will propose a conceptual conjecture to assist with the consideration of this dilemma which I call A Priori's Wager. I propose that the human person is necessarily either the product of a creator or creators, and therefore possessing of a priori pre-existent purpose and meaning; or that the human person is the product of mere time and chance, and therefore possessing of only the post hoc purposes and meanings which we arbitrarily apply to ourselves. I argue that either of these premises may be true, but that the current scientific and philosophical methodologies available to us may neither prove nor disprove either premise. Given these competing premises of which one is necessarily true, but neither may be proven, I argue that we find ourselves fixed in something of a superposition of both transcendent obligati (open full item for complete abstract)

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Education, Health, and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

The purpose of this study was to investigate multiple perspectives and perceptions of good teaching as viewed through the lens of a Parent Teacher Organization's Teacher of the Year Award program. To better understand the complexity of good teaching, I conducted a single case study involving five distinct groups of people: students, parents, principals, school board members, and award-winning teachers. The research questions that guided my data collection and analysis were: 1. What are the participants' perceptions of a good teacher? 2. What are the participants' understandings of teaching, learning, and curriculum? 3. What are the similarities and differences of perceptions and understandings among the five stakeholder groups? Twenty-four participants were interviewed for this study using open-ended, semi structured interviews lasting approximately 20–60 minutes in length. Multiple data sources were collected in this study such as classroom observation field notes, classroom artifacts, public documents, and nomination letters. Findings indicate that good teaching involves fostering long-term personal connections with students through acts of care and confidence building. In addition, good teaching requires a belief in doing what is best for student learning, using creativity in the curriculum, and engaging students in hands-on, active learning. Furthermore, the good teaching described in this study is based on teachers working to communicate with parents, as well as community members, about what is happening in the classroom. The findings of this study add to the debate among schools, communities, and policy makers about what it means to be a good teacher.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Philosophy

I argue that three types of goods for a person—the goodness of her life, her well-being at a time, and the objects that are desirable for her—do not stand in the straightforward, intuitive relations philosophers have commonly assumed. I begin by developing an account of what I call value contribution principles. A value contribution principle says roughly that an increase in some property, all else equal, implies an increase in some value. Value contribution principles express relatively weak but nonetheless important evaluative claims. With near unanimity, philosophers have assumed, in essence, that a value contribution principle holds between a person's well-being at a time and the goodness of her life, i.e., that an increase in her well-being during some period, all else equal, yields a better life for her on the whole. I argue that this is incorrect. Similarly, I argue that it is not the case that greater realization of what is desirable for a person, all else equal, increases her well-being. The result is that our notion of what is good for a person is less united and more equivocal than commonly recognized.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2014, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: School Psychology

Disruptions can prevent the classroom from being an effective learning environment. The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a group contingency that has been proven to effectively prevent disruptions and increase engagement. However, the traditional methods of the GBG include teacher scanning for negative student behaviors, and may not align with Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which is becoming widely adopted in many schools. The study extends the findings of Wright and McCurdy (2011), who compared the GBG to a positive version of the GBG, called the Caught Being Good Game (CBGG). The study examined the effects on student behavior, including engagement and off-task behaviors, as well as teachers' use of positive and negative statements. Results showed both the GBG and the CBGG improved student behavior, with data not clearly indicating one was superior. Neither intervention led to an increase in positive teacher statements. Implications for teachers and suggestions for further research are discussed.

BA, Oberlin College, 1989, English

Flannery O'Connor was not an author who was afraid to take drastic measures, or to be on familiar terms with a deep mystery. She, like the great mathematicians, had points she wanted to connect,. and was willing to tear her fabric to connect them. In her fiction, the disruption she uses to forge her paths has many incarnations. The generating forces of that disruption, and the forces generated by that disruption, can be focused into three immediately identifiable categories: comedy, violence, and the grotesque. In order to better understand O'Connor's fiction and the connections between the taxed analogy of complex numbers, her writing, and her philosophy, these three topics will be dealt with one at a time; though examples from all of her short fiction will be supplied, the discussion will pivot on three stories more or less spanning O'Connor's short-fiction canon: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1952), "Greenleaf" (1956), and "The Lame Shall Enter First" (1962).

Master of Arts in Catholic Studies, Mount St. Mary's Seminary & School of Theology, 2026, School of Theology

In his work Free Choice of the Will, St. Augustine develops a hierarchical framework where all being is defined as good to preserve the goodness of God. Evil can only exist as a privation of that good. This is the same framework employed by Dante Alighieri for his Comedia. Dante employs this framework especially in his Inferno in the architecture of, and the persons encountered in Hell. Just as on earth the damned preferred lesser goods, inherently deprived of the goodness of God, so to in heaven are they rewarded. Because of their choosing sin the damned exist in a state of privation, lacking in being compared not only to each other, but in relation to other beings in Hell in lesser states of privation. The framework of privation provides a means of understanding how a good God can permit evil, why those with the gift of reason would choose evil, and how one might overcome their concupiscent desire to avoid the good and prefer a state of privation.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2026, Management

Biotechnology firms operate at the crossroads of scientific discovery, societal purpose, and commercialization pressures. Although many biotech ventures are motivated by patient impact, there is limited empirical evidence on how mission commitments shape commercialization outcomes and when they help or hinder venture progress. This dissertation introduces and tests Entrepreneurial Mission for Societal Good (EMSG), a firm-level strategic orientation describing how science-based ventures embed societal purpose into decision-making while pursuing commercial viability. Study 1 inductively derived the EMSG construct. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 31 Canadian regenerative medicine founders and executives, a grounded theory analysis identified seven interrelated mechanisms through which entrepreneurs sustain a patient-centered purpose while building capabilities, structuring organizations, and engaging ecosystem stakeholders. Because these mechanisms repeatedly reflect an entrepreneurial approach to enacting mission for societal benefit, the construct is labeled Entrepreneurial Mission for Societal Good (EMSG). Study 2 quantitatively evaluates EMSG as a firm-level orientation using structural equation modeling with survey data from 217 North American biotechnology professionals. Innovative capacity predicts access to capital, partnerships, and innovation output and is also associated with a stronger EMSG orientation. The results also indicate a dual effect: EMSG is linked to purpose coherence and legitimacy, but under mission-market contradictions, it can weaken the conversion of innovative capacity into capital access and innovation output. EMSG shows no direct effect on partnership formation. Study 3 extends these findings using a convergent mixed methods design. The quantitative analyses used 220 survey responses. The qualitative strand comprised 85 open-ended responses drawn from the original survey and a follow-up questionnaire, of which 58 c (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2025, Art/Art History

The story of Lisa, told as the seventh story on the tenth day of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, engages in a nuanced dialogue about female agency and sexuality. Using depictions from Early Modern illuminated manuscripts and literary sources, my research examines the space between the representation of the Early Modern bed and the actuality of contemporary views on female gender and sexuality. Drawing on Dianne Wolfthal's methodological binary of chaste and adulterous bed scenes, as well as Freud's Madonna-whore paradigm, my research aims to expand on these seemingly binary phenomena. Depictions of Lisa, the heroine from the seventh story on the tenth day of Boccaccio's Decameron, break conceptions applied to Early Modern sexuality as she is allowed sexual desire while retaining her social honor. This study focuses primarily on manuscripts that belonged to the Burgundian Dukes John the Fearless (MS Pal. Lat. 1989) and his son, Philip the Good (MS l'Arsenal 5070) but also considers various other depictions of Lisa and comparable figures across the 15th century visual culture. The illuminations of Lisa in these manuscripts complicates the binary female categories of “Madonna” or “whore” through her role as a female exemplum of moral virtue whilst being portrayed in the nude and having agency in her sexual desire; this paper argues that Early Modern attitudes toward female sexuality were not as binary as modern scholars tend to assume.

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2025, Clinical Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

Objective: Negative expectancies have been shown to influence symptom report and cognitive test performance in those concerned about mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) and post-concussive syndrome (PCS). Similarly, iatrogenic processes, such as misinformation provided by healthcare providers, screening procedures leading to false positive results, and negative feedback, may also negatively affect symptom reports and test performance. Additionally, a pattern of symptom report seen in individuals experiencing PCS is reporting a higher number of current symptoms relative to individuals without MTBI history but underestimating their preinjury symptoms relative to nonclinical base rates, known as expectation as etiology or the “good old days” bias. I hypothesized that receipt of false feedback, implying negative performance on cognitive screening, would create a stronger good old days bias and lead to worse performance on subsequent cognitive tasks in those with a history of MTBI. I also explored whether domain identification or group identification modified the effect of false feedback on cognitive performance. Method: Participants were 159 undergraduates with a history of MTBI who were administered a cognitive screening test and completed self-report questionnaires before being provided with randomized false feedback on their screening task performance. Participants were either given feedback that they performed above average relative to their peers or given feedback that they performed below average relative to their peers. Participants then completed PCS self-report measures for current and preinjury symptoms and cognitive tests measuring working memory and memory. Results: Independent sample t-tests revealed there was no main effect of feedback type on preinjury or current PCS symptom report. Cognitive performance on working memory and memory tests did not differ by receipt of positive or negative cognitive screening feedback. Moderatio (open full item for complete abstract)

EDD, Kent State University, 2025, College of Education, Health, and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

This study explores the effective strategies of the PAX Good Behavior Game (PAX, PAX GBG) in supporting students, especially those with tier-two behavioral needs. These strategies foster intrinsic motivation, self-regulation, and identification of emotional awareness in the general education classroom. tier-two interventions within the context of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) approach, this research highlights the importance of repetitive practice in small-group settings to close behavioral, social, and academic gaps. The study specifically investigates the role of PAX Kernels, such as PAX Vision, PAX Leader, and Tootle notes, in reducing unexpected behaviors and promoting self-regulation across settings. Findings suggest that students with consistent opportunities to practice self-regulation in the tier-two setting can successfully transition those skills to the tier-one setting. Improving academic performance and peer interactions through community building. This research emphasizes the significance of using culturally responsive, trauma-informed strategies to enhance school climates, ensuring that all students, regardless of behavioral challenges, can thrive within a collaborative learning community.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1935, Graduate School

Master of Sciences (Engineering), Case Western Reserve University, 2023, EECS - Computer and Information Sciences

With the advent of mixed reality in devices like the Hololens, there is great potential to create and better integrate artistic and social user experiences with these devices. In this thesis, a web user interface along with a Hololens application called Museotify is created on top of the Interactive Commons' CWRUXR framework. This application connects to the Cleveland Museum of Art API to create an unlimited number of unique, user controlled galleries of 2D and 3D artworks for multiple participants in a given session. Executed in real time, the various additional features of the application help to explore the intersection of art and mixed reality by collecting feedback from various students and faculty at CWRU that tested the application. The results of their feedback is synthesized along with existing research on mixed reality user experience to better inform and enhance design choices and production for future mixed reality app development.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, Anthropology

This dissertation investigates how older Puerto Rican adults in Cleveland, Ohio conceptualize subjective good old ages and how they respond when their ability to achieve good old ages is constrained by inequitable political, economic, and socio-cultural forces. Of particular interest is the role of migration in this process. The older Puerto Rican adults in this study were born in Puerto Rico during the “Great Migration” period (1946-1964), during which one in five Puerto Ricans left the island to find jobs in the United States. They grew up and grew older in Puerto Rico during a time of economic restructuring and high outmigration, and subsequently came to Cleveland through a range of pathways. Now in old age, their life histories contain valuable insights regarding how repeated migration throughout the life course relates to aging, and how aging influences migration decisions. Drawing on remote ethnographic research with older Puerto Rican adults, their families, and service providers in the Greater Cleveland area, this dissertation challenges approaches that equate aging with stasis and rootedness, showing instead how quests for good old ages unfold across space and time. First, I describe how older Puerto Rican adults envision good old ages characterized by feeling tranquilo, what the I call a “tranquil old age.” Second, I analyze older adults' quests to feel tranquilo, from youth into old age, to show how nation-state policies beyond US immigration law condition migration as a strategy for the pursuit of a tranquil old age and contribute to the inequitable circumstances that make a tranquil old age hard to find. Third, I examine the role of temporality in older migrant experiences of social inclusion and exclusion. This dissertation advances understanding of how older people forge good lives, despite difficult circumstances. Moreover, this dissertation serves as a corrective to aging theories that have privileged stability and individual-level adaptations, (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Musical Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Music

The goal of this document is twofold: first, to bring to light pieces by female composers who have written substantial works for the trumpet as a solo or chamber instrument, and second, to expand and diversify the traditional canon of trumpet literature. This dissertation document examines three works for solo trumpet: Good Trouble by Dr. Amy Dunker, Trinculo by Sally Beamish, and Concertstuck by Claude Arrieu. All works included in this document have been premiered, and at the time of selection, had not yet been professionally recorded. All composers in this document have written multiple works for trumpet as a solo instrument. This document provides an overview of form analysis, stylistic elements, and performance considerations of these pieces. The form analyses of these pieces do not extensively explore harmonic language as all these pieces are more progressive in tonality, and harmonic analysis is outside the scope of this document. Each analysis chapter discusses relevant historical information, stylistic elements, form analysis, and performance considerations. Performance considerations will discuss any pedagogical benefits as well as a brief discussion of where these pieces would fit into a curriculum. Additionally, a chapter about each composer's biographical information has been provided. Finally, two appendices have been included. The appendices included are interviews done by the author with composers Dr. Amy Dunker and Sally Beamish. Excerpts will be provided for the reader's reference.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Business Administration

Negotiations between teams are pervasive. Whereas the presence of a team can help to create value and promote win-win outcomes, deals reached by negotiating teams often fall short of reaching their full potential due to competition between teams. Building upon insights from group dynamics and intergroup psychology, the current dissertation seeks to examine how team composition can promote high-quality outcomes in an inter-team negotiation context. Specifically, I examine how a contrast effect created by within-team role differentiation (i.e., the good-cop/bad-cop role differentiation strategy) can influence both how value is created and claimed in the negotiation. Results from three interactive team-on-team negotiation experiments support the expectation that greater value is created (i.e., more joint gain) when one team uses the good-cop/bad-cop strategy. However, results also show that the good-cop/bad-cop team also claims more of the value created as compared to the other team. Together, these results help advance our understanding of how team structure can affect negotiation processes and outcomes when teams negotiate.

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Engineering and Applied Science: Aerospace Engineering

There are innumerable applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in today's world. The level of impact of its application depends primarily on the industry it is being applied to. One of the biggest challenges and a preeminent sector of using UAVs is in the field of healthcare. The number of cars today on the roads will only increase substantially with time. While the congestion on roads has several disadvantages, one of the major issues is that an ambulance could get stuck in traffic and be unable to reach the emergency scene on time. It's situations like these wherein the challenge lies. While there are air medical services that are currently being used to transport the patient to the hospital, the cost of using the same is too expensive and highly unaffordable for normal people [1]. Based on the statistics in different parts of the world, the congestion on roads has different levels of severity. And as technology further improves, more chaos on the roads will lead to more accidents and an increase in emergency situations. This thesis focuses on discussing a solution for times where an Emergency Medical Services (EMS) vehicle cannot reach the emergency situation in an optimal and efficient manner due to traffic jams on roads or inaccessibility issues such as rurality of the location of emergency cases. Here, we discuss the system requirements engineering of an emergency drone equipped with emergency medical services, which has the potential to help buy the patient some time while the ambulance arrives on the scene. Using drones allows the EMS to improve the response time by equipping the EMS vehicles with a drone which has a customized first aid kit that includes NARCAN, EpiPen, AED & Bleeder Kit. It is controlled by a remote Pilot-in-command that operates the drone to fly from over the top of the vehicle to the location of the emergency scene. This also involves a by-stander helping the patient with his medical needs while the ambulance is on its way by (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2020, Antioch New England: Environmental Studies

Since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the international community has launched several policy initiatives to address complex environmental problems, in particular illegal logging. One such initiative is the European Union (EU) Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan and its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs). The scholarship on FLEGT has overwhelmingly focused on technical and governance aspects, drawing largely from a single institutional analysis theory. However, there is scant empirical research on a range of theories to understand FLEGT efficacy from a multi-scalar governance perspective. My dissertation research contributes to a multi-scalar forest governance analysis approach to FLEGT efficacy by using two strands of concepts—namely policy coherence and institutional capacity for good governance—to answer three of the most critical and under-researched questions: (a) How do the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) and the United Nations Strategic Plan on Forests (UNSPF) interlink with the FLEGT Action Plan at policy objective and policy instrument levels? (b) What are the potential and realized capacities of VPA processes for advancing principles of good forest governance and implementation of a Timber Legality Assurance System (TLAS) in Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Republic of the Congo (Congo), Ghana, and Liberia? (c) What are the different stakeholders' perspectives on good governance as applied to VPA in Ghana? My dissertation is comprised of three interlinked studies with different methodological designs. An in-depth comparative analysis was employed to examine interlinkages among FLEGT, NYDF, and UNSPF (Chapter 2) and institutional capacity of the VPA process in Cameroon, CAR, Congo, Ghana, and Liberia (Chapter 3) using a review of policy documents. The review of policy documents was complemented with focal point interactions and meta-analysis of VPA cases for Chap (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Education, Miami University, 2020, Educational Leadership

Since the beginning of American education in the U.S., women often have been left out of educational prosperity. First, by excluding females from learning and working, and later by disregarding their capacity for educational leadership. The superintendency of American Schools is perplexing because women dominate the field of teaching whereas men hold the majority of superintendent roles. Although we are in the modern world of the twenty-first century, where women have gained the legal right to equality, gender discrimination exists. A great body of literature exists regarding female superintendents; however, there is a significant gap concerning female rural superintendents. Six female superintendents from rural school districts were invited to participate in this research study. Their stories paint unique portraits of their professional, gendered experiences as rural female superintendents. The purpose of this research study was to explore women's experiences in the rural superintendency, add female voice to history, and illuminate the prevalence of the feminine social injustice, often silenced by society's perception of the American superintendent. Each female rural superintendent's story was unique and intertwined with intersections of gender, leadership, and rurality. Through this narrative inquiry five common themes emerged: 1) The District Must be the Right Fit; 2) Other Women (Female Saboteurs); 3) The Good Old Boys' Club; 4) Loneliness; and 5) An Ethical Fighting Spirit of Determination, Grit, and Resilience. This research found that there are several challenges due to one's gender and those are amplified in the rural setting where a superintendent must wear several hats, manage a lack of resources, and survive the unique value system and culture established by each rural community. This study revealed that gender discrimination endures in the twenty-first century for female rural superintendents by both men and women, stemming from hist (open full item for complete abstract)