BA, Oberlin College, 2021, Comparative American Studies

This thesis draws on interviews with voters and organizers to disrupt preconceived popularized notions of the Deep South, arguing for a reimagining of the region's value through the lens of electoral politics and the Democratic Party's campaign efforts. There is plenty of room for revision in the apathetic approach that national Democrats and progressives treat the South with. This historic and contemporary disdain, paired with common guilt in the promotion of a limited and exclusionary idea of what the South is, contributes to the marginalization of Southern communities of color, queer and trans people, working class folks, and more. However, through attention to voter access, revised organizing tactics, and more, the Democratic Party can be a part of the solution.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2006, Organizational Behavior

The dissertation examines generative capacities and generative organizing for social transformation from a global-critical-organizationalperspective. It is a comparative case study of three social experiments in India, all of which are focused on creating sustainable alternatives for local livelihood. The first case features a successful social transformation through reclamation of traditional environment management methods and creation of parallel governing structures for the ‘commons'. The second case is an attempt by an elected village leader to create a sustainable and locally networked economic model that he hopes can become a viable model for rural India. The third case, a corporate consortium in India has formed a livelihood advancement school for urban, underprivileged youth and places them in jobs thus opening doors to the new economy. However, they vary in terms of structural characteristics occupying unique spaces in a shared post colonial context. This study makes a number of contributions to our field:1) substantive - it brings marginal perspectives to mainstream conversation and moves toward mitigating the ethnocentric imbalance of our field; 2) paradigmatic – based on Hindu philosophy it offers a framework for holistic ontology that transcends the dualistic ontological conceptions of subjectivity-objectivity; 3) epistemological-theoretical, it presents a dialogic framework for studying change, bringing together the much polarized discourses of change-continuity, structure-agency, cooperation-conflict, internal-external sources of change, long term-short term, and output-process and proposes that generative capacities of organizations rest on the interplay between these polarized entities that are conceived of as foundational elements of change phenomena; 4) theoretical-practical - it presents an exposition of Generative Organizing as the interplay between intentional and emergent organizing for change; 5) methodological – it locates itself in an innov (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2004, Organizational Behavior

This dissertation is an invitation for dialogue and change. It introduces a generative, grounded theory of noble organizing; a dynamic process linking noble intentions and the translation of those intentions into social action through processes that defy traditional norms. This inquiry explores four social entrepreneurship organizations in their commitment to the common good and high purpose of developing human communities. Two for profit companies employ a multi pronged holistic approach to economic community development by 1) using the business of finance and credit to stimulate growth in disinvested areas and 2) providing quality service and care for a constituency that includes its low-income minority workforce, clients and ultimately the industry through public policy advocacy and reform. Two nonprofit entities cultivate and maintain communities of the highest quality by 1) providing social justice organizations with alternative funding sources to promote community-based advocacy work and 2) serving recovering drug and alcohol abusers by promoting personal development and collective learning. Interviews with strategic persons, published materials and subsequent consensual validation from each of the organizations were used to develop narratives that provide the framework for this study. A discourse analysis of the narratives revealed six universalistic principles characterizing the ethos of social entrepreneurship. Exploration into the Principles of Intentionality, Serendipity, Values-Led Governance, Unconventional Wisdom, Reinvention and Reverberation offer ways of approaching ideas for developing new directions for organizing in the interest of human beings with the intent to engage persons who desire change for the future and wish to participate in that future by contributing and influencing its own transformation. The term noble is used as a verb qualifier to understand and describe organizing processes that focus on conduct in the service of others and exp (open full item for complete abstract)

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

Complex animals such as mammals are thought to construct high level movement via a motor control hierarchy, where more complex movements are constructed by combining modular motor primitives at lower levels. The primitives at the lowest level are likely to be short sequences of simple movements. Learning the primitives and a control hierarchy is a complex task in a high degree-of-freedom (DOF) system. Experimental results have shown evidence for a spatially-organized repertoire of movements in the mammalian cortex. Drawing inspiration from this idea, this thesis presents a simple, biologically-inspired neural network model for learning a motor primitive map using reinforcement learning rather than explicit supervised learning. The map self-organizes static code vectors that, via a recurrently-connected output layer, are decoded into spatiotemporal behavior representing primitive movements of an organism, which can be “chained” together to generate a wide variety of complex, sophisticated movements.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Engineering and Applied Science: Electrical Engineering

Machine learning (ML) techniques, more specifically artificial neural networks (ANN), are becoming subject of significant interest in almost every field of study and application. However, the high memory bandwidth requirement of current implementations prevents implementation in many applications with low power, area, and time budgets. Neuromorphic computing (NC) has gained increasing interest as a solution for low-power hardware acceleration of ANNs. Additionally, emerging memory devices have gained interest for further optimizing the capabilities of NC. However, a significant development of NCs has been for supervised learning requiring labeled data preventing implementation in applications with scarcity of labeled data or dynamic environments. Meanwhile, biological neural networks have been observed to provide highly efficient solutions for similar problems with no labeled data. In this thesis, we propose and demonstrate an unsupervised clustering neuromorphic architecture implementing the self-organizing feature map (SOFM) algorithm by taking advantage of the in-memory computing capabilities of emerging memory devices. The thesis further enhances the architecture with bio-inspired techniques to further optimize computational capabilities. Further optimization unlocked by the non-idealities in emerging memory devices is demonstrated. Lastly, the thesis demonstrates integration of the architecture with additional NC systems for deep learning capabilities. The final proposed NC-SOFM architecture demonstrates the ability to grow and reconfigure itself like a fluid or organism. Additionally, it demonstrates clustering on benchmark datasets such as RGB, MNIST, and Fashion MNIST and application-specific datasets such as COVID-19 chest x-rays and electrocardiogram (ECG) data. Harnessing the physics of emerging memory devices such as ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs) each synapse utilizes only 26 uW and computes error within the switching speed of the FET. (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, Communication Studies (Communication)

Master narratives of substance use and recovery in Appalachia have been largely dictated and stigmatized by outside entities, leaving little room for the complexity and nuance of the individual voices of those most intimately familiar with the topic. This dissertation explores the individual and collective stories that create the narrative of Wisdom River, a women's transitional recovery house in Appalachian Ohio, in an effort to elevate the lived realities of those experiencing substance use disorder (SUD) and recovery in Appalachia. By centering these stories, the overarching goal of this research is to move away from homogenized, stigmatizing narratives of substance use and recovery in Appalachia and toward a new narrative that honors localized knowledge and creates space for new definitions of success in SUD and recovery organizing. Data for this dissertation were created through intentional participant observation at Wisdom River (attending weekly dinners, driving residents to and from work, participating in recovery events) and through semi-structured interviews with nine members of the organization. I also engaged autoethnographic methods to explore my own role in this narrative as the child of a parent with SUD. The research questions that guided this dissertation are rooted in narrative and identity: What narratives are at play in the narrative ecology of Wisdom River, and how do those connected to Wisdom River narratively construct their identities? As participants shared their stories with me, they explored pieces of their own narratives and identities that reify, complicate, and rebut their understandings of master narratives of SUD and recovery. By confronting master narratives of what it means to experience SUD and recovery, who deserves access to safe and dignified recovery spaces, and what it looks like to be successful in recovery, Wisdom River employs what I identify as a narrative feminist approach to 12 Step recovery. While I remain committed t (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2023, History

This project explores the political organizing and intellectual writings of Mae Mallory during the 1950s and the 1960s. Mallory is a Black working-class woman who emerged as an influential figure during the struggle to integrate public schools in 1950s Harlem, New York. Mallory's maintained her commitment to self-determination, self-defense, and Black internationalism, despite the pervasive anti-communism of the Cold War. Mae Mallory's opposition of the Cold War climate by the refusal to dilute her ideology and organizational goals, complicates the idea of the “classical narrative” of the Civil Rights Movement. This conception of the movement, coined by Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin, is defined by male-centered leadership, non-violence, integration, and inclusion into American citizenry. Mallory, her writings, and her organizing were antagonistic to these notions, throughout her career she maintained a community-centered and militant approach.

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

Digital platforms, such as Facebook, Amazon, and Uber, are becoming crucial components of modern societies' infrastructure. In addition to driving innovation and economic growth, they shape political opinion and facilitate social change. Despite their pervasiveness, digital platforms are increasingly challenged with emerging uncertainty that stems from a variety of sources and affects a wide range of platform actors. Without a proper and prompt approach to navigate such uncertainty, digital platforms are susceptible to potential failures and business discontinuity. This dissertation provides a preliminary understanding of the emerging uncertainty in digital platforms. It focuses on uncertainty associated with negative events that range from incidents in the interactions between the platform's external users to major exogenous shocks that have a system-wide impact on the digital platform. Drawing on qualitative methods and interdisciplinary research, the dissertation is comprised of three independent studies. The first study utilizes a grounded theorizing approach to understand how users of digital platforms attribute blame for negative incidents. It follows media coverage of extreme incidents in two major platforms: YouTube and Airbnb. Findings show that the initial attribution of blame is transformed into a collectively distributed attribution through a retrospective sensemaking process. Study 2 seeks to understand how digital platforms organize for high reliability to manage uncertainty in negative incidents. An in-depth case study of the support function in a marketplace platform demonstrates evolving routine dynamics in the upstream (preventing incidents) and the downstream (resolving incidents) processes. Study 3 adopts a macro perspective on negative incidents by studying how digital platforms maintain operational resilience against major shocks. A longitudinal case study follows the response of a marketplace platform to the disruptions caused by the recent C (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2022, Educational Leadership

This dissertation in practice examines the absence of an advocacy framework for Black placemakers in southwest Springfield neighborhoods seeking to transform vacant spaces into vibrant pocket parks, green spaces, and community gardens. This critical community-based participatory research addresses inadequate public policies, resources, and technical assistance to create and sustain neighborhood sites for endurance, belonging, and resistance. Thematic findings indicated that systemic issues, street-level organizing, and sustainability are primary barriers and opportunities. An action intervention and change process was developed to establish the Springfield Park and Green Space Ecosystem (SPGE). The action plan focuses on a community coalition of power building, a community benefits agreement, zoning revisions, and public-private partnerships with results-based accountability.

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

Unions have existed in the United States since it was founded in 1776. Unions, often referred to as labor unions, have existed in a variety of ways and scales of membership. Despite, or perhaps because of, unions' well-documented capacity to improve the wages, benefits, and working conditions of their members, they have been consistently and systematically resisted by the holders of capital since the very beginning. Largely as a result of this ongoing conflict, unions in recent years in the United States have been marred by historically low union density and a declining unionization rate. Despite evidence that an increasing number of people would join a union if offered and an even larger number of Americans who generally support the labor movement, the situation has not improved overall. This paper provides further context for the decline in unionization, the issues surrounding them today, their benefits and shortcomings, as well as alternative forms of organizing being practiced to address the absence of unions. This context ultimately serves as the justification for my design, which is a digital platform that functions as a centralized hub for information on organized labor and as a platform to discuss organized labor. It would serve the purpose of addressing the lack of resources available to workers today and provide a space for people to engage in discussion on related topics. The first iteration of this is a website, but it would ultimately become part of a greater ecosystem of products, software, tools, and resources, as features are added on. The educational portion of the website would display information to learn about unions, alternative forms of organized labor and collective action, shortcomings of the modern unionization system, as well as a broad overview of the labor movement and its role in modern society. An online forum or discussion board would provide a centralized channel where people can go to discuss the information on the homepage o (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Communication Studies (Communication)

This dissertation is interested in affect, or the aspects of social life that make a difference because of the ways we feel them. The happenings of a group working in public health are interpreted using affect theory to trace how disruptions to typical organizing processes happen. Because of its role in shaping social scenes, understanding affect's operation is a potential route towards change, even in situations that seem to be solidly set in one particular form. Instances of the group reworking understandings of their role in addressing health equity and disparities are presented to highlight affect's operations--a force that can lead to positive, negative, or ambiguous change. Feminism informs this research both theoretically and in its commitments to considering the practical implications of learning from this group. Feminist formations of affect are foregrounded by thinking about how bodies are involved in sensing the world as well as the role of love and support in the collectivities of our organizing efforts. The affective movements of the group are traced by sensing the trajectories of the way things are heading, identifying patterns, and accounting for power's role. Implications for communication and organizing in public health theory and practice are offered, calling for public health to engage affective analysis by developing capacities for self, group, and structural reflection on the sociocultural underpinnings of population health.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Comparative Studies

The #BlackLivesMatter Movement is one of the most influential Black political movements of the post-civil rights era. In popular and scholarly accounts, it has been characterized as “more secular” than and antithetical to the Civil Rights movement and “Black church” tradition, which, by contrast, are seen as emblematic of a larger tradition of Black religious protest. Contrary to these secularizing reductions and interpretations, this dissertation locates a politics of the sacred at the heart of #BlackLivesMatter, which is irreducible to a secular idiom. I consider the use of both spiritual and religious language and practices in the movement as a part of “sacred politics.” In what ways, I ask, do language and ideas of the sacred circulate through and inform the #BlackLivesMatter movement? How does the movement's insistence on the sacredness of Black life serve to collapse and undercut any sharp distinction between religious and secular politics? How might we understand this movement as a part of a larger history of Black religious protest for racial justice rather than defined against it? My research explores these questions by centering the voices of participants in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. I analyze the use of rhetorics of the sacred in memoirs and other autobiographical writings, alongside images and other digital artifacts (videos, tweets, etc.) as they circulate on social media (e.g., BlackTwitter, Vine, Instagram, YouTube). My analysis of this sacred discourse is informed by and in conversation with theories drawn from religious studies, political theology, Afro-American religious thought, and Black studies. My project seeks to bring the intersection of religion and this contemporary political movement into plain site to demonstrate how sacred politics is central and not peripheral to their work for racial justice. By looking for religion not in its institutional formations but as it is embodied in the rhetoric and repertoire of activist practices—on t (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Teaching and Learning

In an effort to explore methods that can challenge the research/practice divide in the field of mathematics education, this project develops a methodology for people- centered classroom-based research. I analyze the process of building teacher-researcher relationships and show how relationships work to support teachers as they make changes to their practice. In this project, I argue that relationships themselves are a methodological tool that can work to bridge the research-practice divide and analyze what those relationships enable for teachers. This study reveals both the methods involved in building relationships and the effects of relational work as expressed by teachers. As part of this work, I argue that making classroom-based research explicitly people-centered requires shifts in what we think research is going to produce and do, who we do research for, and what we think the role of the researcher is. These shifts have led me to understand the need to expand the epistemological base for classroom-based research. While many researchers seek to do work for and with people, the knowledge base that we look to must include people whose work is explicitly people-centered, not only from work that has been field-centered. I draw on the theories of organizers, including Dolores Huerta, Ella Baker, Bob Moses and the Black Lives Matter movement, and Honduran activists, Berta Caceres and Miriam Miranda.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2021, Theology

The principle of subsidiarity is a signature concept in Catholic social doctrine and papal teaching. Yet, an incomplete understanding of the full principle and papal refrain from prescribing policies or concrete examples of the principle has created difficulties in developing subsidiarity within specific social and cultural situations. This project uses theological and historical methods to investigate the social work and thought of Bishop Bernard James Sheil, his collaboration with Saul Alinsky, and the results of their collaboration in the institutionalization of Alinsky-style community organizing in the American Catholic Church in the form of the Campaign for Human Development, to determine how Catholic subsidiarity is influenced by an adaptation to American democratic culture and the demands that Catholic subsidiarity makes on American liberal democratic social imagination. This study shows that Bishop Sheil's collaboration with Saul Alinsky represents a full embodiment of the structural pluralism, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and associational subsidiarity that make up the principle of subsidiarity while also attending to American democratic culture's focus on the liberal individual. In short, Bishop Sheil's legacy, in the form of the institutionalization of his collaboration with Saul Alinsky in the CCHD, is representative of a distinctly American and wholly Catholic form of subsidiarity.

Doctor of Business Administration, Cleveland State University, 2020, Monte Ahuja College of Business

Business analytics (BA) continues to be one of the top technology trends in recent years as well as one of the top priorities for CIO's in many large enterprises. Business analytic tools can significantly help small businesses in quickly responding to changing market conditions and improving their organizational performance. However, prior studies report that the adoption rate of business analytics in small businesses is extremely low such that only 32 percent small businesses have adopted Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions till now (SMB Group, 2018). As small businesses constitute a major force in the US economy, a slow rate of adoption of significant technological innovations, such as BA, may be a critical concern that can affect the economy in the longer run. Despite this, the extant small business literature as well as the information systems literature fails to provide an understanding of why small businesses are not receptive to current BA trends. Therefore, drawing upon the theoretical underpinnings of organizing vision theory, strategic orientation literature, and theory of upper echelon, this study investigates the willingness of small businesses to adopt newer innovations in BA. More specifically, this study investigates the impact of the reception of organizing vision of BA by owner-managers, learning orientation of small businesses, analytics orientation of small businesses, and personal characteristics of owner-mangers on small businesses' willingness to adopt BA. By drawing its motivation from prior strategic orientation and BA literature, this study is also among the first one to propose, formally develop, and validate the measurement construct of analytics orientation.

PHD, Kent State University, 2020, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geography

Understanding the South Asian seasonal cycle is important. Using a synoptic climatological approach to identify circulation patterns, using the self-organizing maps (SOMs) technique, this research successfully has demonstrated several novel aspects of the seasonal cycle. First, it identifies the south Asian seasonal cycle showing the general climatology in the context of spatio-temporal variation. Second, this research provides an objective estimation of onset and withdrawal dates for four determined seasons (winter, pre-monsoon, monsoon, and post-monsoon). Third, this dissertation provides an understanding of the different possible monsoon mechanisms across the seasons by analyzing multiple atmospheric layers and potential feedback. Categorizing atmospheric patterns individually for each of five surface variables (sea-level pressure, wind, temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation), a 9x9 SOM was created using surface-level data obtained from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 1 project. Nodes are assigned to seasons, as well as seasonal transitions, based on defined standard criteria, and the seasons on the SOMs were determined and partitioned based on their temporal variations. A complete reversal of mean sea-level pressure over the course of the year, with high pressure over the land in winter and low pressure in the summer, and a clear seasonal cycle in wind directions have been observed. The monsoon season can be identified as starting earlier using variables other than precipitation, substantiate prevailing precondition of the atmospheric circulation prior to monsoonal rainfall. The pressure gradient due to land-sea thermal contrast and the movement of ITCZ lead other effective climatological features in different atmospheric layers, are the most important driving force for monsoon circulation.

BA, Oberlin College, 2020, Environmental Studies

This study seeks to compare grassroots organizing efforts against two different fracked gas pipelines. Rooting my analysis in the theory of social movements, I focus on the role of the ideological grounding of the resistance movements, the composition of resistance coalitions formed, and the tactics and strategies employed in opposition to these pipelines. I find that a broad-based coalition with a focus on relationship-building is important to the success of the movement. Additionally, I determine that the presence and involvement of small, medium, and large nonprofits as well as the use of direct action strongly contribute to the success of anti-pipeline movements. These insights are useful for those working to build successful resistance movements against the fossil fuel and extractive industries. This investigation adds to our understanding of grassroots movements, environmental justice praxis, and left politics in practice.

Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Ohio University, 2020, Political Science

Maternalism as a political strategy has been frequently used in US politics. I analyzed maternalism through its use in two groups from the 1960s and 1970s: Women Strike for Peace and the National Welfare Rights Organization. In analyzing these groups, the limitations of maternalism are revealed. Maternalism proves to be an exclusive, sometimes racist strategy that allows white women more success in using it. However, maternalism also offers some benefits in creating a pathway into politics for people otherwise excluded, as well as mobilizing large groups as WSP and NWRO both demonstrate. To conclude, I discuss the ways maternalism can adapt to include an ethic of care that allows for the maintenance of the benefits of maternalism while discarding the problematic gendered and racist elements.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Materials Science and Engineering

Poly(methyl methacrylate), also know as acrylic, has excellent optical properties, light weight, good mechanical properties, and weatherability. Due to the balance of these outstanding properties with cost efficiency, poly(methyl methacrylate)s are widely used in architecture, medicine, electronics, agriculture, paints, aircraft, and automotive industries. However, the lifetime of poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA) is reduced in outdoor applications because of exposure to solar radiation, temperature, and moisture. During the polymer degradation process, a variety of environmental stressors act on the polymer leading to degradation of its properties. Although standardized durability and weathering tests are widely used to collect failure information and evaluate durability of materials based on the typical pass/fail criteria, degradation modes, mechanisms, and rates are not clearly understood. Therefore, a better understanding of degradation modes, mechanisms, and rates is critical. To optimize and extend the service life of polymer materials to more than 25 years in the outdoor environment, a domain knowledge-based and data-driven approach has been utilized to quantitatively investigate the temporal evolution of degradation modes, mechanisms and rates under various stepwise exposure conditions. Six grades of PMMA were studied, including one unstabilized and five stabilized PMMAs exposed 3200 hours in three weathering conditions. The unstabilized PMMA showed a significant YI increase of over 25, whereas a highly-stabilized PMMA showed a slight YI increase only between 0.5 to 0.7. The degradation of unstabilized acrylic, revealed by Urbach edge analysis, arises from the presence of residual MMA monomer, with a shift of absorption edge from 4.35 eV to 3.11 eV under UVA-340 irradiation. For unstabilized and partially-stabilized PMMA formulations, quantitative degradation rates (the Induced absorbance to dose (IAD)) indicates that the UVA-340 irradiation (Hot (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2019, Botany

Applications of clustering and visualization approaches are essential in uncovering biological insights from the large and complex genomic datasets. The ability to efficiently cluster large sets of nucleotide sequences can aid in performing many genomics tasks, such as the taxonomic assignment of metagenomics reads, identification of sequencing errors, and exploring virus genome variations. Effective visualization approaches are essential in interpreting the complex biological processes associated with the differentially expressed genes obtained from transcriptomics studies. In this dissertation a novel prime number-based feature extraction approach was proposed with applications in nucleotide sequence clustering. The feasibility of the proposed approach was explored by incorporating the approach as a filter into the nucleotide clustering tool PEACE (Parallel Environment for Assembly and Clustering of Gene Expression) and testing it on sequencing reads and virus genomes. The filter was effective in accelerating the clustering of Influenza A virus segment 4 and Dengue virus genomic sequences. The utility of the prime number-based feature extraction approach was further explored by using it to develop a self organizing map-based tool for clustering Influenza A virus segment 4 sequences. Additionally, network-based visualization methods were utilized to uncover the biological processes associated with the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) reprogramming during chicken retina regeneration, using transcriptomic data. The findings associated with this study will aid to better understand the clustering and the visualization of genomic data. Chapter 1 of this dissertation provides an introduction to the usage of clustering and visualization approaches in genomics. Chapter 2 provides the details of the study performed to investigate the feasibility of the proposed filter in accelerating PEACE clustering. Chapter 3 gives in details of the network-based visualization approaches (open full item for complete abstract)