Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Over the past few decades online learning has continually evolved to become a popular pathway to higher education. The COVID-19 pandemic produced an unprecedented shift toward online learning through Emergency Remote Teaching. Recent literature has increasingly represented online learning environments through the negative experiences of students and instructors as they navigate such a difficult transition. However, comparatively little attention has been given to the experiences of instructors in established online programs. This article presents idiographic findings from a qualitative study that used interpretative phenomenological analysis of interviews with five college-level online instructors. These findings describe the emphasis online instructors place on maximizing student engagement, facilitating the student’s translation of learning to their own lives, belief in online learning as an equal-but-different pathway to higher education, sense of purpose from providing accessible education to a diverse student body, and the unique challenges faced in course preparation and student connection.

“Man, the bravest animal and most prone to suffer, does not deny suffering as such: he wills it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering.” -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Juvenile justice reform is a complex and contentious topic. Despite the increased attention and focus throughout the years of looking for more effective ways of dealing with youthful offenders, America is still one of the most punitive countries regarding juvenile crime – averaging nearly 60,000 incarcerated youth daily. In recent years, there has been a trend toward reforming the juvenile justice system to prioritize rehabilitation over exclusion and punishment, with a preference for restorative approaches and strategies instead of traditional exclusionary and punitive responses. However, continued high incarceration rates combined with almost 90 percent recidivism rates suggest these approaches are ineffective and lack the necessary elements to address the underlying causes of juvenile crime or help position our youth for successful reentry or participation in society. As we learn more about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the devastating long-term effects on a child’s development, we recognize a connection between ACEs, toxic stress, and juvenile crime. ACEs refer to adverse or traumatic events that occur during childhood, such as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction. These experiences can pose significant risks to children’s physical and mental health. Toxic stress refers to the chronic exposure to the body’s stress response systems reacting to severe and prolonged adversity, such as child abuse or neglect. Developmental changes in the body and brain due to toxic stress can increase the risk of physical and mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, and lead to increased negative behaviors and criminal activity. This paper argues that a trauma-informed approach to reform juvenile justice is needed to help survivors of ACEs and toxic stress repurpose their adversity into a tool of opportunity and empowerment. This trauma-informed approach will, in turn, help trauma survivors find purpose in life, alter their perspective of their world, and perform actions and behaviors in service of their goals. Only by including an individualized trauma-informed approach will we finally realize collective juvenile justice reform.

This thesis aims to interpret, analyze, and bring forward the connections between psychological disorders and serial murder. As part of that, the essay will be emphasizing specific diagnoses such as antisocial personality disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and delusional disorder while profiling serial killers throughout history known to suffer from these mental illnesses. Using the accounts and known diagnoses of serial killers such as Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and others, this thesis will further reflect the psychological history and evolution of these mental health disorders. To do that, this thesis will also show the romanticization of serial killers in popular culture. Utilizing the scholarly research made available in the psychological and criminal justice literature, this thesis will further the conclusion that psychological disorders are the root of serial murder and explore the possibility that continued advances in the study of psychological disorders are the primary cause of serial murder and that criminal profiling may have the potential to reduce the incidents of murder that we do see in serial killer tendencies. We are further exploring the possibility that continued advances in the study of psychological disorders and criminal profiling can reduce the incidents we do see.