2025 UMKC Dissertations - Freely Available Online
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Item Understanding adolescent organ and tissue donation decision-making using a qualitative descriptive design: A-DONOR study(2025) Smelko, Alaina Ruth; Russell, Cynthia L.The critical shortage of organ donors is a national health crisis. In the US, there is a discrepancy between favorable attitudes toward organ donation registration and willingness to donate organs. Though educational interventions increase knowledge and positive attitudes toward donation, this change does not always translate into registration. Current research has yet to qualify adolescent donation decision-making processes. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to understand how adolescents make organ donation decisions, including facilitators and barriers. A purposive sample of 14 adolescents, registered organ donors (n=9) and non-organ donors (n=5), were recruited from a rural Pennsylvania high school. Participants were interviewed in-person or online and interviews were audio recorded. Audio recordings were transcribed by NVivo software and verified. Field notes were incorporated into transcripts for use during conventional content analysis. The age range was 16 to18 years-old with a mean age of 17.5 years old. Of the participants, 42.9% (n=6) were female, 57.1% (n=8) were male, and 92.69 % were white. The primary category for decision-making processes was I made the decision myself. Facilitators included I like helping people and I think I got influenced; conversations with parents were impactful and supported adolescents’ donation decisions. Barriers included I was in the moment, I forgot it [organ donation] was even a question, and I don’t think anyone talks about it [organ donation]; participants shared their confusion with the registration processes, including parental consent for minors. Comparable to the decision-making processes of living organ donors, adolescents in this study demonstrated decisional uncertainty and ownership of their donation decision. Similar to other studies, age was a barrier to becoming a donor while parental support was an important influence in their decision-making. Future implications include education for organ donation registration, collaborative education with parents and adolescents, and replication of this study with a more diverse sample. Policies which limit minors’ independent decision-making should be challenged as adolescents demonstrated decisional competence in their organ donation decisions. This study increased understanding of adolescents’ organ donation decision-making processes, facilitators, and barriers which may increase life-long donor registration, thus decreasing the organ donor shortage.Item Reaching out from within: Poet’s soft lightning delivered with thunder(2025) Sanders, Poet T. L.; Caruthers, Loyce Ellenor, 1947-In this critical autoethnography, I explore my transformative life journey profoundly shaped through mentorship, analyzed within the conceptual frameworks of ecological systems theory, social networking theory, social capital theory, identity theory, and transformational leadership theory. Through introspective narrative inquiry and poetic expression, I critically examine my lived experiences from childhood through adulthood, highlighting the pivotal role mentors played within my ecological systems—microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. My study underscores the capacity of mentorship to mediate adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including intergenerational trauma and systemic racism, emphasizing the necessity of culturally responsive, asset-based mentoring practices to nurture resilient identities. Empirical literature and personal reflections converge, evidencing mentorship’s role in cultivating my prosocial behaviors, enhancing my academic and career trajectories, and influencing my identity formation. I advocate for integrative mentoring structures in educational settings, emphasizing accountability, equity, and comprehensive stakeholder involvement. Ultimately, this work contributes valuable insights into effective mentoring strategies, proposing holistic, culturally competent frameworks that empower youth to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.Item Translanguaging in the English medium instruction classroom: a heuristic critical ethnography(2025) Parisi, Michaela C.; Barger, RitaThis heuristic critical ethnography explores the experiences of both multilingual and monolingual students in an English Medium Instruction (EMI) classroom implementing translanguaging pedagogy (TP) at a linguistically diverse public high school in the Midwestern United States. The study investigates how TP shapes student engagement, identity, and academic experiences by encouraging the use of students’ full linguistic repertoires within classroom instruction and interaction. The translanguaging classroom itself serves as the unit of analysis, providing a lens into the social, emotional, and academic dynamics that emerge in EMI spaces where language is treated as a resource rather than a barrier. Grounded in translanguaging theory (García & Wei, 2014), sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978), and critical theory, this qualitative study utilized classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis to capture nuanced perceptions and practices. Data analysis revealed four central themes: Building Classroom Community, Teacher as Reflective Practitioner, Language as Identity, and Equity Tensions. These themes demonstrate how translanguaging not only supports linguistic access and identity affirmation for multilingual learners but also facilitates inclusive collaboration and empathy among monolingual students. The teacher’s reflective practice emerged as instrumental in fostering an environment where translanguaging was embedded in both pedagogy and classroom culture. At the same time, findings illuminated persistent equity tensions, including linguistic hierarchies and systemic barriers that affect students’ access to language resources and participation. These findings underscore the potential of translanguaging pedagogy to advance equity in EMI classrooms, while also highlighting the institutional limitations that constrain its full implementation. This study contributes to the growing field of research on translanguaging in secondary EMI contexts, offering implications for teachers, school leaders, and policymakers seeking to foster more inclusive, linguistically responsive educational environments. It calls for professional development, structural support, and policy reform that center students’ linguistic and cultural resources as assets for learning and belonging.Item Timely and uniform application of curing compound on concrete pavement(2025) Nkongolo, Etienne Beya; Kevern, John T.Concrete curing is a critical stage during construction for volume stability, long-term strength development, and ultimate durability. Poor curing can lead to shrinkage, scaling, and other durability issues. Proper concrete curing maintains sufficient moisture in the concrete and allows continuous hydration. The high surface are-to-volume ratio of concrete pavement is making it difficult to maintain a uniform moisture content throughout the pavement, therefore curing concrete will provide a better environment for concrete to develop uniform and equal hardened properties. While a variety of curing techniques can be used, including wet curing, internal curing, and forced chemical curing, membrane-forming curing compounds (MFCCs) are often the easiest and most cost-effective technique to minimize evaporation for pavements and slabs placed on grade. The application of MFCC has been adopted by States Department of Transportation (DOT). However, achieving a quality curing has been challenging because of the limitations of techniques that can be implemented on field to evaluate the effectiveness of curing compound application on concrete pavement in real time. Some states DOTs rely on the use of the calibrated white paper sheet examination or the experience of the engineer for evaluation of the curing compound application effectiveness. Additionally, most of the evaluation tests are performed on hardened concrete and not applicable or difficult to assess for fresh concrete in the field. This study has developed a test method embedded resistance that can measure curing effectiveness in real-time during the early age of concrete. The embedded resistance as a measure to assess drying behavior of fresh concrete to quantify the effectiveness of curing Embedded resistance is a technique that uses concrete moisture content to assess the effectiveness of curing compound effectiveness on concrete. Concrete goes through phase change from plastic phase to solid during the early age. This transition is mainly caused by the hydration reaction. During the early age of concrete cement reacts with water to produce hydration reaction products and the excess water evaporate due to drying, leading to concrete microstructure development. However, at early age the presence of moisture in concrete makes concrete less resistant to current flow, as the electrical current in concrete moves through the pore spaces. With time more pores spaces in concrete are filled up with hydration reaction products, subsequently concrete becomes more resistant to the current flow, as electrical conductivity ability of concrete depends on the conductivity of the fluids inside the interconnection of pores system, the degree of saturation of the concrete, and the permeability. Therefore, using the resistance technique to trace moisture content in concrete can be an important tool to assess curing compound application effectiveness on fresh concrete. The study evaluated the effect of curing compound applications rates and application time using the embedded resistance technique. Furthermore, this study investigated the effects of curing compound application time on freshly placed concrete, the effect of curing conditions as well on the performance of concrete cured before and after the initial setting time, and lastly the effect of curing compound application rates and uniformity during the application. Tests were indexed against the standard moisture loss testing in addition to a newly developed real-time assessment of moisture loss and curing by embedded resistance. Ultimately with the goal of providing a correlated measure of moisture loss from field measurements. Lastly, surface profile degree of hydration and the maturity curve were performed in this study to under the effect of curing compound application rates on degree of hydration and strength gain. The findings from this study demonstrated that resistance is able to distinguish between samples with and without curing compound and significant differences in drying observed between the surface and relatively shallow depths. Additionally, the testing techniques were able to differentiate between the quality and rate of curing compound application and evaluate performance across a variety of environmental conditions. These findings indicate that a resistance-based approach could be a low-cost and non-destructive technique to evaluate the effectiveness of curing compound applications in real-time. Additionally, the study showed that a correlation can be found between moisture retention test, degree of hydration and the embedded resistance test. Based on the findings the embedded resistance test could be a suitable replacement for moisture loss test the test is much simpler and quicker test to be performed both in the lab and in the field.Item From interfacial nanostructures to advanced constructs: harnessing surfactant self-assembly at liquid interfaces(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2025) Amirfattahi, Saba; Niroobakhsh, ZahraLiquid-in-liquid 3D (LL3DP) printing offers a promising platform for fabricating soft material structures by depositing an ink phase within an immiscible support bath. While this technique enables the creation of complex architectures for applications in biomedical engineering, drug delivery, and tissue scaffolding, its broader potential is currently limited by the stability and tunability of the liquid-liquid interface. The primary focus of this work is to develop and stabilize structured liquid interfaces that can support and facilitate LL3DP, enabling more reliable and versatile printing of soft materials. By designing material systems with enhanced interfacial stability and responsiveness, this approach aims to expand the library of printable inks and unlock new possibilities for controlled soft matter fabrication. In the first studied system, we investigate the stabilization of the liquid–liquid interface to fabricate a bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gel (bijel) using the LL3DP approach. The bijel consists of two interpenetrating, continuous phases of immiscible liquids, stabilized by the self-assembly of colloidal particles—primarily nanoparticles— at the liquid interface. The structural features of the printed bijel constructs are characterized using confocal and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), while their mechanical properties are evaluated through shear rheometry. Compared to other soft materials explored for LL3DP, bijel-based prints offer unique advantages, including interconnected hydrophobic and hydrophilic domains confined within defined geometries, along with tunable structural and rheological characteristics. In the second system, a novel material system based on lipid self-assembly is presented to stabilize water-oil interfaces as the underlying mechanism in the LL3DP. The stabilization process, governed by the formation of nanostructures at the interface, is comprehensively analyzed using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), rheometry, and microscopy techniques. This material system, once incorporated successfully in LL3DP, enables the fabrication of intricate 3D constructs, including fibers, substrates, and microneedle patches, which demonstrate exceptional mechanical properties and biocompatibility, as validated by tensile testing and cell viability assays. Finally, the incorporation of silica nanoparticles into a material system previously established for soft matter 3D printing is presented, which was shown to result in the formation of aerogels with significantly enhanced mechanical strength and stability. Such silica aerogels, known for their ultralight weight and high porosity, tend to reinforce the liquid-phase structures while preserving flexibility. Upon further characterization, SAXS measurements confirm improved nanostructural organization in these aerogels, while rheological properties are comprehensively characterized. The development of these aerogels with hierarchical ordering across multiple length scales opens new possibilities for designing high-performance, multifunctional materials for medical implants, tissue engineering scaffolds, and filtration systems. This thesis, by bridging 3D printing and interfacial stabilization through selfassembly of various colloidal components such as inorganic (silica) nanoparticles and small amphiphilic molecules, lays the foundation for future advancements in soft material fabrication. The precise control over liquid-phase architectures and their tailored mechanical properties, as well as structural ordering at various scales, offers new possibilities for designing new class of materials for medicine, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing.