Auburn Theses and Dissertations: Recent submissions
Now showing items 141-160 of 9929
The Costs and Benefits of Visibility: A Panel Study of Nonprofit Fundraising and Marketing Effectiveness Before and After COVID-19
(2025-11-25)
This dissertation examines how marketing and fundraising investments shape nonprofit financial outcomes in the United States. Drawing on IRS Form 990 data from more than 35,000 public charities between 2013 and 2023, it ...
Evaluating the Performance of Southern Highbush Blueberry Cultivars Grown in Conventional and Alternative Production Systems
(2025-11-24)
The blueberry is the most valued berry fruit in the United States. The rising demand for blueberries can be accomplished by increased production areas in warmer climates. The enhanced adaptability of southern highbush ...
Prepared to Serve: Evaluating Two Interventions Promoting Readiness Among Service Members and the Helping Professionals Who Serve Them
(2025-11-24)
The social organization theory of action and change (Mancini et al., 2005) highlights the role of community service organizations and social processes in promoting adaptability and well-being within communities. Support ...
A spatiotemporal assessment of urbanization and water quality in the subtropics
(2025-11-24)
Urban populations and urban lands are expanding globally, which is predicted to continue in the coming decades. Through mechanisms like the heat island effect and diminished infiltration, urbanization confers a variety of ...
Illegitimate Tasks and Negative Spillover: The Roles of Positive Work Reflection and Job Security
(2025-11-24)
Workplace illegitimate tasks have been associated with a variety of negative consequences, but there is a need for a better understanding of the processes and contextual factors that influence these effects. This study ...
Bilevel Optimization in Wireless Federated Learning
(2025-11-20)
Federated learning (FL) has become a cornerstone of privacy-preserving, distributed machine learning, allowing multiple clients to collaboratively train models without centralizing their data. While significant progress ...
Catalysts and Constraints: Academic Diversity Officers and the Paradox and Politics of Organizational Change
(2025-11-20)
In 2020, racial tensions erupted into social unrest following the murders of multiple unarmed Black citizens, prompting heightened awareness and action for change. Corporations responded by implementing various strategies ...
U.S. Educators Learning in Peruvian Amazon: Evidence of Leadership Development in Participant Reflections
(2025-11-20)
This research study investigated the potential for transformative experiences in nature to foster authentic leadership among U.S. educators, through a narrative exploration of their reflections on a trip to the Peruvian ...
Growth, Stability, and Resilience in U.S. Farm Income
(2025-11-20)
This dissertation investigates the effects of government payments, extreme weather events, and renewable energy expansion on U.S. farm income. Chapter 1 assesses the impact of two major federal programs—the Conservation ...
Challenge and hindrance stressors: The mediating role of resource gain and resource loss in stressor appraisals
(2025-11-18)
The challenge-hindrance stress model has been the topic of significant empirical investigation, recently incorporating stressor appraisals within the framework. The incorporation of stressor appraisals has alleviated recent ...
“When They Don’t Come”: A Narrative Inquiry into First-Generation Students’ Experiences with Student Support Programming
(2025-11-18)
There is a growing need for first-generation student-focused services in higher education, yet evidence about how such services should be structured and made most effective remains limited (Whitley et al., 2018). Motivated ...
Solar-Wind Charge Exchange in Comets: Bayesian Diagnostics of Ion Composition and Freeze-In Temperature
(2025-11-18)
Cometary X-rays from solar-wind charge exchange (SWCX) probe solar-wind composition and coronal freeze-in conditions, yet most spectra are low- to moderate-resolution and strongly blended. Conventional fits often add more ...
Development in heterogenous landscapes: Linking embryonic environments to juvenile fitness in a lizard model.
(2025-11-18)
Developmental plasticity is the capacity of a single genotype to express multiple phenotypes in response to different early-life environments. Because developmental environments differ across space and time, they create ...
Public Policy for Resilient Oyster Management in the Gulf of Mexico: Managing a Vulnerable Species by Engaging Coastal Stakeholders
(2025-11-13)
The eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) is an important economic, ecological, and cultural species throughout the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Despite its importance, oyster populations have been declining long-term throughout ...
Novel Outlier Detection and Clustering Methods Based on Cluster Catch Digraphs
(2025-11-13)
We propose a novel family of outlier detection algorithms built upon Cluster Catch Digraphs
(CCDs) and their extensions, designed to overcome the limitations of existing methods in handling
high-dimensional, heterogeneous, ...
Microbial community profiling in meat quality and shelf-life
(2025-11-13)
The studies presented here were designed to evaluate microbial community profiles of ground beef, with the objectives of determining shelf-life and spoilage and bridging these findings to support community outreach and ...
Three Essays in Consumer and Producer Decision-Making: Food Waste, Pesticide Use, and Local Markets
(2025-11-10)
This dissertation examines how individuals and producers make decisions in contexts characterized by uncertainty, imperfect information, and evolving market institutions in the food and agricultural system. Across three ...
Developing Engineering Principles for Computational Protein Design
(2025-11-05)
Accurate and efficient computational design of binding proteins remains an outstanding challenge which has implications in the fields of therapeutics, diagnostics, sensing, and more. The recent successes of machine learning ...
Epidemiology and Risk Factors of Equine Parvovirus-Hepatitis, Hepacivirus, Pegivirus caballi, and Pegivirus equi in U.S. Horses
(2025-10-29)
Emerging equine viruses such as Equine parvovirus-hepatitis (EqPV-H), Equine hepacivirus (EqHV), Pegivirus caballi (P. caballi), and Pegivirus equi (P. equi) have recently gained recognition as significant contributors to ...
Writing Wrongs: A Clinical Trial of an Adapted Expressive Writing Activity for Minoritized Students at Predominantly White Institutions Who Experience Microaggressions
(2025-10-10)
Racial and ethnic based stressors, such as microaggressions, compound upon universally experienced stressors of higher education and result in lasting negative repercussions for minoritized students enrolled at Predominantly ...