Students Partnering with Faculty (SpF)

Comparative analysis of civic activism and civil society-government partnership: Cases of United States, South Korea, and Peru
Bok Gyo Jeong, Jung Ah (Claire) Yun, Sara Compion, CBPM & CLA

This study will contribute to identifying the role of civil society organizations in public policy formulation and implementation, the provision of social services, and the advocating for rights of marginalized people and communities. These aspects will complementarily explain the deepening and broadening of democracy in the selected countries and go beyond the scores measured by the institutional democracy index. The findings may help explain the governance level of the respective countries and show how and to what extent civil society and government collaboration contributes to resolving imminent social problems. This study will provide an interesting set of global and interdisciplinary insights that will have resonance for scholars in public administration, global studies, political science, sociology, and history alike.

From Teacher Stress to Teacher Thriving Among Early Childhood Teachers During COVID-19: Self-compassion and Stress Resilience as Potential Mediators
Jennifer Chen, School of Curriculum and Teaching, COE

The goal of this empirical study is twofold: (1) investigating potential relationships among the four variables: teacher stress, self-compassion, teacher stress resilience, and teacher thriving; and (2) testing the extent to
which the relationship between teacher stress and teacher thriving may be mediated by self-compassion and teacher stress resilience. Self-compassion has been found to mitigate teaching-related stress and help develop stress resilience among early childhood teachers during COVID-19 (Chen, 2022). To investigate the potential direct and mediating relationships among the four variables, the research team will administer a survey to a national sample of early childhood teachers teaching young children (in preschool-3rd grade) during the 2021-2022 school year when many of them might have cautiously returned to in-person instruction (following health and safety protocols) or continued to engage in remote or hybrid instruction amidst COVID-19. These unconventional teaching situations might have consequently exacerbated their stress levels.

A comprehensive approach for data analytics and visualization on covid-19 pandemic
Ching-yu Huang, School of Computer Science and Technology, CSMT

We would like to expand the research and propose a comprehensive scope that extends this analysis to different variables that might be correlated with, or directly impact data related to the COVID-19 virus. More concretely, this includes cancers, other diseases, alcohol consumption, education levels, household income, temperature, flu cases, and air pollution for the counties in each US state. It is very important to allow these factors to be visualized together with our current COVID-19 data and run a holistic analysis by combining all the possible variables. We hope to develop programs with advanced algorithms that can systematically analyze and visualize the interactions between these large datasets and find more hidden information. The results could greatly benefit communities locally and globally.

Theatre for Young Audience and New Jersey: Documenting 50 years of Children’s Theatre in the Garden State
Rachel Evans, School of Curriculum & Teaching, COE

The goals of this project are as follows:
1. To investigate the status of professional children’s theatre in NJ fifty years ago, 2. To chronicle the timeline of significant events in the history of professional children’s theatre in NJ, 1972 - 2022, 3. To design interview strategies to collect oral histories of theatre artists who contributed to the establishment of TYA in NJ, 4. To document the landmarks in NJ’s TYA history, as well as the aesthetics representative of the theatre artists working here, 5. To select, in consultation with playwrights, the playscripts that are the hallmarks of the professional TYA community in NJ, and 6. To publish the histories, interviews, and playscripts that collectively serve to provide a snapshot of the last 50 years of TYA in NJ.

Citizen Opinion Mining from Multi-Source Social Media Platforms
Daehan Kwak, School of Computer Science and Technology, CSMT

The web mining system is developed to monitor, analyze, and visualize the negative citizen sentiment via multiple social media platforms, from Twitter, Quora, and Reddit. This mining system will obtain the comments based on geographic location and negative sentiment, such as #angry or #mad, and search for recurring words that are used to determine the topic of the negative public option, such as #GasPrice. First, a web crawler is implemented to scrape tweets from Twitter, and posts and comments from Quora and Reddit, that contain certain keywords based on geographic location and negative sentiments, such as #fear or #hate. These tweets/comments are then searched for recurring words that are used to determine what the topic of the negative public opinion is, such as #Immigration or #Health. Second, tweets/comments are then analyzed via a sentiment analyzer that quantifies the negative sentiment on a numeric (1-10) and color scale. Third, topic modeling is conducted on the metadata to retrieve topics. Fourth, the keyword metadata is then collected and embedded on Google Maps to visualize the topic of the negative public sentiment in the specific area. Finally, a case study is conducted on tweets collected for the year 2019-2020 as proof of concept.

Kean Compound Collection Analysis by LCMS
James Merritt, NJCSTM

Over the past 11 years, our lab has amassed a collection of over 250 novel chemical entities (NCEs) for drug discovery screening. These NCEs were prepared and purified by Kean students using state of the art synthetic and purification techniques. The structural identity of each NCE was confirmed by nuclear magnetic resonance and in most cases purity was approximated by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. Most drug discovery groups require proof of at least 90% purity to justify testing of NCEs in biological assays. Additionally, most medicinal chemistry journals require proof of at least 90% purity by liquid chromatography mass spectroscopy (LCMS) to justify publication. Until this year, our research group did not have regular access to an LCMS. As a result, most of our compounds have insufficient spectral data for biological analysis and publication. The University recently purchased a new LCMS (Advion Expression CMS) for our synthetic labs. The goal of this project is to confirm the purity and identity of each NCE in our collection using the Advion Expression CMS.

Identifying key decision-making factors for electric vehicle adoption: agent-based model approach
Yonghee Cho & Byeonghwa Park, CBPM

The adoption and diffusion of the technology have attracted a lot of attention in various fields and have been applied to various cases of agent-based modeling. This study demonstrates the use of ABM to investigate the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in various scenarios and considers various barriers to mass adoption of EVs, such as price, range anxiety resulting from the limited range of an electric vehicle, lack of infrastructure, long charging times, technology resistance, uncertainty, and safety. In this study, ABM integrates socio-demographic information, vehicle prices, gasoline prices, financial incentives, charging infrastructure, and network effects. The electric vehicle distribution model is verified based on the agent's sociodemographic characteristics, driving habits, gasoline price, subsidy, and vehicle price. This model will provide tangible measures to aid decision-making by helping EV manufacturers, government agencies, and consumers to consider the interdependencies inherent among them. Insights found in this study can be applied to analyze other types of adoption and the diffusion of new products.

A study of vegetable growth with various self-made organic fertilizers in hydroponic systems
Dongyan Mu, School of Environment and Sustainability Sciences, CSMT

This project proposes research on growing leafy plants with organic fertilizers in hydroponic systems at Kean University. The project will also make educational materials to introduce hydroponic production at schools and in communities. The project will include three objectives: 1. Grow two vegetables (kale and arugula) with three self-made organic fertilizers (compost tea, compost leachate, and fish water) in three hydroponic systems (Nutrient Film Technology (NFT) hydroponics, Deep Water Culturing (DWC) hydroponics, and clay pellets media (CPM) hydroponics). 2. Compare vegetable yields, plant tissue contents, nutrient uptakes, and resources (water, electricity, and growing materials) use in three hydroponic systems and provide a cultivation guide/manure on using organic fertilizers in hydroponic production. 3. Design and develop educational materials, including workshop activities, presentation slides, promotion videos, flyers, and signages to introduce hydroponic production and promote hydroponic application at home and in communities.

Creating Virtual Reality Tools for Remote Rendering of Confocal Microscope Data
David Joiner, NJCSTM

The work proposed here will focus on continued development of that prototype. Both students on this SpF grant worked as part of a Freshman Research Initiative group, testing out different networking interfaces designed to work with Unity and learning how to synchronize objects across multiple instances of Unity scenes running simultaneously on different computers. We are looking to continue this development by setting up a data pipeline to pull data recently captured on Kean’s confocal microscope, load and render it in Unity, and allow for one or more remote scientists to interact with the data and with a scientist at Kean in real time. If successful, this will provide a powerful tool to allow remote scientists to collaborate with the confocal imaging center at Kean.

Expanding the Nantucket Historical Association Research Collaborative
Henry Stankiewicz, Robert Busch School of Design, MGC

The intention of this SpF application is to expand the research initiative that is currently shaping within the Nantucket Historical Association Research Collaborative, as well as involve student researchers to create forward-thinking storytelling opportunities within the context of design technology. The objectives are as follows and align with Kean’s dedication to student learning and collaborative opportunities with community and educational spaces across the nation.
• Further develop the research partnership with the Nantucket Historical Association Research Collaborative, engaging students in collaborative research focusing on storytelling and design technology
• Pursue external funding and publication opportunities for student-involved research

The Making Neighborhoods Project
Camille Sherrod & Christopher Navetta, MGC

The AIA Film Challenge, organized by the American Institute of Architects, challenges architects and designers to produce short films that amplify stories of equity in the built environment. Working with an interdisciplinary group of design students and faculty, the goal of this proposal is to produce a short documentary on efforts from Kean students, faculty, and community leaders to improve low-income communities throughout New Jersey. The goal of this project is to raise awareness of important stories of community rebuilding and empower Kean University students and faculty to use their skills to serve the public interest. Selected submissions will be showcased through the American Institute of Architects and subsequently presented during Kean Research Days and several other national venues in the fall and spring of AY ‘22-’23.

Does your pandemic boredom lead you to live stream shopping?
Min Chung Han, School of Management and Marketing, CBPM

This study is conducted to understand why American consumers are attracted to live-stream shopping and what makes them purchase through live-stream shopping as opposed to those regular e-commerce shopping. As live-stream shopping proves to be popular among young consumers, this study sets out to investigate what attracts young consumers to live-stream shopping and whether the covid pandemic played a role in it. This study employs the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework (Jacoby, 2002) as a theoretical base to support the research model. This research aims to provide theoretical evidence and introduces American consumer perspective for live-stream shopping.

COVID City: Composition as a means of community healing and musical expression
Lynann E. Schraer-Joiner, School of Curriculum and Instruction, COE

This study is a continuation of ongoing work with the adults of the ACE program and is founded upon critical issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic which has “disproportionately impacted” special needs populations (Ayers et.al., 2020; Constantino et.al., 2020). Many require consistent in-person support, care, and essential therapies within their living environments and have experienced a sustained interruption of necessary aid. This has been the case for our ACE community partners. Their restrictions were extensive due to a variety of comorbidities and communal living criteria which forced them into to a sustained quarantine from March 2020-June 2021. This severely impacted their opportunities for socialization, educational programming, and creativity and led to increased anxiety, PTSD symptoms, depression, melancholy, and thoughts of suicide.

Compassion in Organizations in Times of Collective Suffering
Ipek Kocoglu, School of Management and Marketing, CBPM

This study aims to 1) provide a systematic and extensive literature review on compassion, 2) conceptualize organizational capacity for compassion on the grounds of compassion theories from different disciplines, and 3) provide a research agenda for future research avenues related to both theoretical and methodological issues. This systematic review provides valuable insight into the conceptualization and operationalization of organizational compassion as a collective, dynamic and interpersonal process, which in turn contributes highly to the agenda of organization studies.

Shareworthy: Storytelling for Advertising
Robin Landa, Robert Busch School of Design, MGC

GOALS: To research and write a new book titled Shareworthy: Brand Storytelling for
Advertising (Columbia University Press). To advance an understanding of how to conceive brand stories with purpose and that map back to corporate responsibility to society. To advance an understanding of how corporate social responsibility infuses a company’s purpose and actions. To inform courses in the Robert Busch School of Design’s new BFA: Advertising program in the Michael Graves College. To disseminate my research through publication of a book by Columbia University Press.

A novel deep neural network for noisy speech recognition
Xudong Zhang, School of Computer Science and Technology, CSMT

Our goal is to explore using deep learning techniques and persistent homology in noisy speech recognition. We plan to publish our research results in academic journals and/or conferences. This research project will also provide an opportunity for students to improve their programming skills and capabilities of experimental design and data analysis in academic research.