Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2013, Educational Leadership

Colleges and universities have a unique opportunity to develop leaders capable of addressing the challenges of tomorrow. Critical components of such leadership include understanding oneself, being able to navigate challenges, work across difference, and understand and adopt multiple perspectives. The ability of higher education to support the development of leaders who can address challenges can have a major effect on the future of our country and our world. This longitudinal study explored connections between college student leadership and the developmental capacities necessary to engage in effective leadership. The study used the Social Change Model of Leadership (SCM) (Higher Education Research Institute, 1996) and Self-Authorship Theory (Baxter Magolda, 2001) as frameworks to explore connections between leadership and developmental capacities. I used data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education collected between 2006 and 2009 in this dissertation study. I analyzed four years of transcripts for 22 students who had high quantitative gains on the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale over a four-year period. The sample was diverse with just under half of the students identifying as students of color. I conducted the data analysis for each of the participants by: 1) coding for SCM leadership values; 2) analyzing development toward self authorship across four years; 3) and coding for patterns in development and SCM leadership value shifts across four-years. The results of this study demonstrated two major findings furthering our understanding of leadership using the SCM. The first finding highlighted the various stages students go through as they move toward effectively demonstrating SCM leadership. The second major finding was that development was connected to all of the SCM leadership values and increasing student developmental capacities is a necessary component of leadership development. This study produced major implications for (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marcia Baxter Magolda Dr. (Committee Chair); Kathleen Goodman Dr. (Committee Member); Judith Rogers Dr. (Committee Member); David Cowan Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Developmental Psychology; Educational Leadership; Higher Education; Higher Education Administration

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Arts and Sciences: Philosophy

Traditional approaches to cognition take it to be a fundamentally brain-based phenomenon. On this view, the brain functions as a type of information processing center, making cognition a matter of computational processing and representational symbol manipulation. In contrast, embodied, enactive approaches to cognition emphasize the role of the body in cognition and non-representational perception-action dynamics. While the embodied and enactive paradigm has been gaining in popularity, it has yet to adequately engage with complementary approaches in biology that aim to define the organizational structure of organismal life. In this dissertation, I argue that an enactive approach to cognition in nature can be enriched by incorporating the central tenets of both developmental systems theory and extended interpretations of evolutionary biology. This framework, which I term biological enactivism, defines organisms as cognizing systems structured by both their internal dynamics and their dynamic relations with environmental features corresponding to their sensorimotor capacities, developed as a result of their coupled interactions with their environments over both developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time.

Committee: Anthony Chemero Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Angela Potochnik Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Nathan Morehouse Ph.D. (Committee Member); Thomas Polger Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy of Science

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, Biochemistry

Insulin is a peptide hormone that is the primary regulator of glucose homeostasis in vertebrates. Insulin is secreted by the endocrine pancreas in response to increased interstitial glucose levels; insulin initiates the uptake of glucose by peripheral tissues. Since its first use in 1921, insulin has been the primary treatment for the metabolic condition known as Type I Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM; caused by the absolute lack of insulin), and a component in the treatment of Type II Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM; caused by the relative lack of insulin in relation to peripheral insulin resistance). The ubiquitous clinical use of insulin has led to investigation of its structure-function relationships. Such studies have uncovered the rich evolutionary history of insulin and its usefulness as a model molecule. Indeed, the study of insulin has revealed a number of concepts of protein structure/function relationships and the in vitro and biosynthesis of proteins. This dissertation is a continuation of the nearly century-old field of insulin biochemistry. The first section of the thesis examines the evolutionary constraints responsible for the conservation of several structural features within the insulin B chain as they relate to the biosynthesis, stability, and biological activity of the hormone. Concepts expounded in these studies may be generalized to the evolution and folding xvii process of globular proteins as a class. Furthermore, such studies may be used to inform the design of therapeutic insulin analogs as exemplified in the second part of the dissertation. This section demonstrates how conserved structural features of insulin may be exploited and modified to produce favorable therapeutic effects even if such modifications would be unfavorable in the context of vertebrate physiology. This approach underscores the importance and usefulness of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of insulin both as a model molecule and as a therapeutic agent.

Committee: Michael Weiss MD, PhD (Advisor); Paul Carey PhD (Committee Chair); Faramarz Ismail-Beigi MD, PhD (Committee Member); George Dubyak PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Biochemistry; Biophysics; Endocrinology; Medicine

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

The development of the Protein A platform for monoclonal antibody purification was one of the most important advances in biotechnology. However, no analogous system exists for the purification of non-antibody proteins. The use of self-cleaving intein tag technology is a potential platform for non-antibody protein purification. In this dissertation, recent advances in self-cleaving intein tag technology will be discussed. First, the ΔI-CM self-cleaving intein system was modified for use in high throughput protein purification applications. Second, the ΔI-CM intein was paired with a novel affinity tag, the choline-binding domain tag, to allow for affinity purification of recombinant proteins using commercially available anion exchange resins. This new purification was further optimized using a design of experiments approach. Finally, an ongoing project for the development of improved inteins will be presented and discussed. Currently, self-cleaving intein tag technology is limited to bacterial expression systems due to non-ideal intein cleaving kinetics. To be a useful platform, intein technology must be compatible with all types of expression hosts, especially mammalian cell culture. To overcome this, a method to engineer inteins with improved properties using directed evolution and yeast surface display was developed. This method was used to enrich libraries of intein variants for variants that are suitable for use in mammalian cell culture. Initial characterization of these enriched libraries identified several candidates with improved properties. Overall, the work described here lowers the barrier for widespread adoption of self-cleaving intein tag technology in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

Committee: David Wood (Advisor); Andre Palmer (Committee Member); Jeffrey Chalmers (Committee Member) Subjects: Chemical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, Chemistry

Finding new energy solutions have been the focus of recent research in the fields of science and engineering. Nanotechnology could provide decisive technological breakthroughs and have a considerable impact on harvesting the renewable energy supply that is required to make the transition from fossil fuels. During my PhD study, I have worked on nanostructured inorganic materials with applications in energy conversion and storage. This thesis includes several different topics. First, we have developed a facile method to prepare free-standing Co3O4 nanowire arrays in solution via the ammonia evaporation induced growth. These nanowires are hollow, mesoporous, and single-crystalline. We have carefully studied their growth mechanism, and discovered that they are from the topotactic oxidation conversion of intermediate brucite Co(OH)2 nanowires. This process is accompanied by the Kirkendall effect: fast-moving outward diffusion of Co2+ ions are balanced by the inward diffusion of vacancies, which eventually condense as the hollow core. More interestingly, we have identified that axial screw dislocation plays a critical role in the 1D growth of intermediate brucite Co(OH)2 crystals. Moreover, we have extended the ammonia evaporation induced growth to the syntheses of other metal hydroxide/oxide nanostructures. Hierarchical architectures, including CuO spheres, ZnO dendrites, Cd(OH)2 or CdO nanofibers, and Ni(OH)2 or NiO nanoplates have been prepared by carefully controlling reaction conditions. We have demonstrated the use of nanowire arrays for two important electrochemical applications: lithium ion batteries and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Co3O4 nanowire arrays grown on Ti foils have been directly applied as the anode of Li ion batteries. They have high specific capacity and excellent rate capability at current rates as large as 50C. Also, we are able to dope Co3O4 nanowire arrays with Ni by a similar method. They show high electrocatalytic activity for OER. In bo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Yiying Wu (Advisor); Patrick Woodward (Committee Member); Prabir Dutta (Committee Member) Subjects: Chemistry; Materials Science

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2013, Creative Writing/Poetry

This original collection of poems explores personal transformation, specifically through three overarching themes: the dream and its significance to waking life and the psyche, the hybridization of the human body with animals or the dismemberment of the body, and the discovery of self through human relationships. The manuscript is divided into three sections set off by epigraphs (take note that these do not represent the three themes mentioned above). The first takes on more of a naive, anxious tone, the second presents the beginnings of revelation and growth, and the third deals ultimately with some form of acceptance—not necessarily acceptance of a unified self but rather acceptance that the self is always in flux.

Committee: Sharona Muir (Advisor); Eugene Gloria (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts