Institutional Repository
The UDSpace Institutional Repository collects and disseminates research material from the University of Delaware.
- Faculty, staff, and graduate students can deposit their research material directly into UDSpace. Faculty may use UDSpace to fulfill the University of Delaware Faculty Senate Open Access Resolution, and in many cases may use it to fulfill open access requirements from grant funding agencies.
- Departments can use UDSpace to publish or distribute their working papers, technical reports, or other research material.
- UDSpace also includes all doctoral dissertations from winter 2014 forward, and all master's theses from fall 2009 forward.
To learn more about UDSpace, and how you can make your research openly accessible to the public, visit our UDSpace Policies website.
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Recent Submissions
Challenging the Status Quo and Leading: Michele Kang, Building a Global Women’s Soccer Organization
(Women’s Leadership Initiative, Lerner College of Business & Economics, University of Delaware, 2025) Moszer, Aaron; Sullivan, Lauren; Idowu-Kunlere, Tosin; Bullough, Amanda
In 2022, Y. Michele Kang broke barriers by becoming the first woman majority owner of a multi-team soccer organization featuring the Washington Spirit and Olympique Lyonnais Féminin. In 2023, she expanded her organization by adding the London City Lionesses. Kang’s journey to soccer team ownership was unconventional, as she had primarily worked in healthcare IT. However, her reputation for challenging the status quo and driving change was immediately evident in the investment, resources, and attention she brought to her teams. This case study delves into the leadership challenge of Michele Kang as she sets out to build the first-of-its-kind global women’s soccer organization. The study aims to demonstrate that this venture is a promising business opportunity and a beacon of hope for achieving equity with male peer teams and their associated resources.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this case study, the students should be able to:
• Identify leadership skills necessary to elevate women’s soccer revenue, pay, profile, attendance, and interest.
• Suggest how Michele Kang can navigate building a global culture of excellence and data sharing across her multi-team organization.
• Identify attendant challenges to training women with equipment and programs designed specifically for women, rather than adapted from men’s programs and equipment.
Building Data from Correspondence: A "Collections as Data" Approach
(2023-11-14) Abner, Kayla; Henry, Britney
A digital scholarship librarian and a graduate student in English collaborated to create network data as a pilot “collections as data” project, facilitating computational research with UD digital collection materials. We share our process, lessons learned, and how collections as data can be explored at an institution of any size.
Discourse, incivility and language aggression in social media debates on Biafra separatist agitation: Implications for Nigeria’s democratic future
(Media, Culture and Society, 2025-01-27) Ifeanyichukwu, Ebuka A.; Hoffman, Lindsay H.
This study explores the use of incivility and language aggression in social media debates on Biafra separatist agitation. Using the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach, 611 samples which reflected the opinions of pro-Biafra and anti-Biafra groups were analyzed to highlight how incivility and language aggression shape the Biafra agitation social media discourses. Contrary to other studies that situate the use of incivility to the pro-Biafra ingroup alone, this study found that the use of dehumanizing metaphors, threats, and aggressive language are mutual strategies utilized by both pro-Biafra and anti-Biafra ingroups in advancing their viewpoints. A major finding which recurred in the study’s themes is that that lack of genuine post-war reconstruction is a major predictor of incivility and language aggression in the discourse of Biafra agitation. This implies that the mutual animosities present in the debates were driven by historical grudges, ethnic prejudices, and dearth of objective truth-telling.
Intensification of Renewable 4,4′-Dimethylbiphenyl Synthesis for Recyclable Diesters
(ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, 2025-02-03) Fields, Charles C., IV; Jain, Preeti; Subramaniam, Bala; Allgeier, Alan M.; Vlachos, Dionisios G.; Lobo, Raul F.
Reducing the global dependence on petroleum-derived chemical products requires renewable alternatives to replace established materials. Recent investigations demonstrated a biobased pathway to prepare the platform chemical 4,4′-dimethylbiphenyl (4,4′-DMBP). The synthesis of 4,4′-DMBP follows a two-step process: (1) 2-methylfuran (2-MF) oxidative coupling to 5,5′-dimethyl-2,2′-bifuran (5,5′-DMBF) and (2) 5,5′-DMBF tandem Diels–Alder-dehydration with ethylene to afford 4,4′-DMBP. Here, we report the intensification of reaction conditions in step (1), improving 5,5′-DMBF space-time yield up to 1.10 mol L–1h–1, an 86% increase from the baseline. Scale-up of step (1) was hindered by oxygen-deprivation-induced palladium black formation and reaction exotherms decreasing yields at larger scales. Oxygen sparging, mechanical mixing, and internal cooling implemented simultaneously enabled a 108× increase in 5,5′-DMBF production to an average of 13 g/batch. In step (2), the use of a homogeneous La(OTf)3 catalyst in the Diels–Alder-dehydration reaction─instead of heterogeneous γ-Al2O3─led to a 54% increase in 4,4′-DMBP yield with a 70 °C temperature reduction to 180 °C. Scale-up of the Diels–Alder-dehydration to 3 g/batch maintained para-selectivity for 4,4′-DMBP with full conversion to the product within 20 h. Renewable 4,4′-DMBP is achieved from the improved pathway and isolated in 96.7% purity for further utilization downstream.
Effects of uniqueness on extraction from definite NP objects
(Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 2025-01-22) Tollan, Rebecca; Doroudiani, Bahareh; Heller, Daphna
Going back to Ross (1967) and Chomsky (1973), it is recognized that acceptability of wh extraction out of syntactic “island” configurations is ill-formed. One kind of configuration that has received a lot of attention is NP objects. Here, extraction is sensitive to definiteness: Whereas extraction from an indefinite NP is judged as grammatical, extraction from a definite NP is reported to be ungrammatical (e.g., Which book did Sharon read a/*the chapter of?; Fiengo and Higginbotham 1981). However, NPs are not homogeneous (Grimshaw 1990), but minimally comprise (i) concrete (ii) result, and (iii) process nouns. It has been claimed that these three nominal subclasses respond differently to the definiteness asymmetry in NP subextraction (Davies and Dubinsky 2003). We reexamine Davies & Dubinsky’s generalizations using three acceptability judgement experiments, coupled with novel corpus data. We demonstrate the relevance of the distinction between relational nouns (e.g., chapter) and functional nouns (e.g., title). We propose a novel analysis whereby questions with extraction out of a definite object are degraded if uniqueness presupposition of definite the is not satisfied. This extends a growing body of literature arguing that most “island” effects are not rooted in syntax but arise from semantic-pragmatic inconsistencies (Erteschik-Shir 1973; Szabolcsi and Zwarts 1993; Abrusán 2011; Abeillé et al. 2020, a.o.).