VTechWorks
VTechWorks provides global access to Virginia Tech scholarship, including journal articles, books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, slide presentations, technical reports, working papers, administrative documents, videos, images, and more by faculty, students, and staff. Faculty can deposit items to VTechWorks from Elements, including journal articles covered by the University open access policy. Email vtechworks@vt.edu for help.
Open Access Policy
Virginia Tech's open access policy enables researchers to deposit the accepted version of scholarly articles with no embargo.
Theses and Dissertations
Virginia Tech was first in the world to require ETDs in 1997, and continues to add scans of older theses and dissertations.
Open Textbooks
More than 50 freely available and openly licensed textbooks are among our most downloaded items.
Communities in VTechWorks
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Recent Submissions
Modeling the Effects of Sea-Level Rise on Flooding in the Lower Ozama River Basin, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
De Los Santos, Maria (Virginia Tech, 2026-02-05)
Sea-level rise (SLR) and extreme precipitation increasingly threaten low-lying tropical cities, yet flood assessments in the Dominican Republic have relied primarily on static, elevation-based approaches. This study develops a multi-model framework to evaluate the impacts of SLR and compound fluvial and tidal interactions on flooding in the lower Ozama River Basin, Santo Domingo. A one-dimensional (1D) HEC-RAS model was reconstructed from Belliard (2020) with newly incorporated bathymetric data, while a two-dimensional (2D) unsteady flow HEC-RAS model and a static bathtub model were used to simulate present and future inundation scenarios. The 1D simulations showed that including bathymetry increased hydraulic accuracy and produced larger flood extents for higher return period events. The 2D model captured spatial and temporal flood dynamics across SLR scenarios of 0.30–1.00 m and in compound configurations combining SLR with 25-, 50-, and 100-year discharges. Compared with the bathtub model, which predicted 1.97 km² of inundation, the 2D simulations yielded 0.52 km² for equivalent SLR levels, indicating that static methods overestimate flood area by neglecting flow connectivity and backwater effects. Compound scenarios produced the most extensive and prolonged flooding, confirming that interactions between river discharge, tides, and SLR amplify inundation nonlinearly. Results identify Domingo Savio, Los Tres Brazos, and Los Guandules as the most flood-prone neighborhoods and highlight the need for dynamic hydraulic modeling in urban adaptation planning. The framework developed here provides a physically consistent basis for improving flood risk mapping and advancing scientific understanding of coastal and riverine flooding in the Dominican Republic.
Recommended Syllabus Components: What Trauma-Informed Components Do Higher Education Instructors Include in their Syllabi?
Walters, Amanda Derringer (Virginia Tech, 2026-02-05)
A majority of students entering college have experienced at least one potentially traumatizing event, and up to half of college students experience trauma during their time in college. Trauma can impact a student's engagement, behavior, and cognitive functioning, affecting their learning and memory. Trauma-informed pedagogy is a pedagogical approach rooted in SAMHSA's trauma-informed framework wherein instructors can support the resilience and academic success of all students, particularly those who have experienced trauma. While trauma-informed pedagogy is an emerging field, and research ties trauma-informed pedagogical principles to positive student learning outcomes, few studies have investigated what trauma-informed pedagogical practices are currently being implemented at the college level. This quantitative study investigated three questions: (1) What trauma-informed syllabus components do higher education instructors include in their syllabi? (2) What differences exist in the inclusion of trauma-informed syllabus components across content area domains? (3) What differences exist in the inclusion of trauma-informed syllabus components across academic levels? A sample of 1,000 syllabi across 86 institutions were evaluated for the inclusion of 16 trauma-informed syllabus components. Findings reveal that while some trauma-informed practices are being widely implemented in college syllabi (up to 92% of syllabi), others remain less common (0.5% of syllabi). Significant differences were found across content areas in some components, while academic levels demonstrated generally similar adoption rates. These results illustrate the current landscape of trauma-informed pedagogical adoption across college classrooms.
Urban Agricultural Education: Exploring Good Practices for Recruiting and Retaining Underrepresented Youth Into the Agricultural Industry.
Robinson, Quintin Orlando (Virginia Tech, 2026-02-05)
The agricultural industry continues to face a shortage of qualified workers in high-skill, high-wage positions, while underrepresented youth remain largely excluded from agricultural education and careers. This study examines successful urban School-Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) programs that have effectively recruited, retained, and prepared underrepresented youth for agricultural professions. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this qualitative multiple-case study explores how external factors, school practices, and teacher influences shape students' attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms toward agricultural careers. Data were collected through interviews with teachers, administrators, and alumni from four urban high school SBAE programs recognized for engaging diverse student populations.
Findings indicate that family perceptions, financial constraints, program accessibility, and exposure significantly influence students' intentions to pursue agricultural careers. Self-efficacy, mentorship, inclusive curricula, and strong community-school partnerships were identified as critical to student persistence and engagement. Early exposure and culturally relevant learning experiences were key in transforming negative perceptions of agriculture into sustained career interest.
Recommendations include expanding urban agricultural programs, strengthening mentorship and community partnerships, and developing inclusive curricula that reflect the cultural and historical contributions of underrepresented groups in agriculture. These findings can guide educators, policymakers, and community leaders in creating equitable and sustainable pathways that increase the participation of underrepresented youth in the agricultural workforce.
Changes in the Activity Levels and Physiological Welfare of Dogs Pre- and Post-Adoption
Phillips, Grace E. (Virginia Tech, 2025-12-11)
Numerous potential stressors that are present in the animal shelter are often absent or less intense in the home, which can lead to changes in adopted dogs’ behavior, activity, and overall welfare. Given notable differences between these environments, dogs’ activity or behavior in the shelter may not necessarily reflect that in a home. Instead, this behavior may be indicative of the dog’s welfare while being sheltered. Our study utilized a within-subjects design to examine how dogs’ activity, physiology, and perceptions of their behavior change within and between the shelter and home environments. To evaluate this, 19 dogs wore PetPace Health Monitoring collars to measure their activity and physiology across each of their final 20 days in the shelter and their first 20 days post-placement into a home. Dogs’ activity was measured each minute using an accelerometer, while dogs’ pulse, heart rate variability (HRV), and respiration were measured using an acoustic sensor within these collars. A modified C-BARQ was completed by care staff in the shelter three weeks post-intake and adopters and caregivers in the home three weeks post-placement to evaluate dogs’ behavior and activity in both environments.
Our results revealed that, while living in a home, dogs had significantly lower pulse and respiration rates, as well as higher HRV, than when they were in the shelter. Dogs also spent, most significantly, more time resting and less time in high activity in their homes as compared to the shelter. Each day in the home, dogs’ rate of rest significantly increased by 1.2%, while their rate of high activity decreased by 5.6% in the home and 1.8% in the shelter. Care staff in the shelter and caregivers in the home also reported significant differences in dogs’ behavior, although reports of behavior remained mild in both environments. Most notably, dogs displayed greater fear-based and aggression-related behaviors in the home, while their excitability was higher towards visitors in the shelter. Additionally, we found that both care staff and caregivers underestimated how much time dogs spent resting while also overestimating the amount of time dogs spent in higher levels of activity.
Taken together, the increase in dogs’ rest and decrease in their high activity in a home, combined with improvements in pulse and respiration rates and heart rate variability, provide compelling evidence of the positive change in welfare dogs experience in a home. Furthermore, these results support the use of activity monitoring as a means of evaluating the welfare of shelter-living dogs. Underestimations by staff of dogs’ perceived rest and overestimations of their high activity highlight the advantages of continuous monitoring technologies for canine welfare assessment. Moreover, differences in dogs’ fear and aggression in the home, as compared to the shelter, reinforce the difficulty in predicting post-placement behavior. These results also further support the need for behavioral support programs for adopters and caregivers. Further considerations for interventions like foster care should be made, particularly for dogs that display elevated levels of high activity and reduced rest. Temporary placement with a caregiver might address these concerns and provide behavioral information in a home environment, offering potential support for both the immediate and long-term welfare of dogs in animal shelters.
Prediction modelling of pallet overhang on box compression strength
Makwana, Hiral Rajendrakumar (Virginia Tech, 2025-12-02)
Accurate prediction of box compression strength (BCT) loss resulting from pallet overhang is critical for maintaining the integrity of corrugated packaging in global logistics. This study presents an expanded empirical analysis and predictive modelling framework to quantify the impact of pallet overhang on BCT. An integrated dataset that combined data from previous research with newly conducted experiments was developed to capture a broad range of box configurations, board types, and overhang conditions. Corrugated boxes fabricated from three board grades were tested under standardized conditions following TAPPI T 804. A space-filling design systematically varied box dimensions and overhang magnitudes along the width, length, or both sides. The combined training dataset included 2,723 compression tests. An additional 600 compression tests from thirty commercial box designs formed an independent validation set used to evaluate model performance. A new multiple linear regression model was developed, yielding an R² of 0.867 on training data, and 0.707 on validation data, with normally distributed residuals. Box height and edge crush test (ECT) values exhibited minimal influence within the studied ranges, while overhang magnitude, box perimeter and board type were the significant predictors of strength reduction. To further enhance predictive accuracy and capture nonlinear effects, different machine learning (ML) algorithms were evaluated. Among models trained without cross validation, the neural boosted achieved the best performance (Training NRMSE as 0.073 and Validation NRMSE as 0.088), outperforming the new multiple linear regression baseline (Validation NRMSE as 0.103). Under cross validation, the neural boosted model again yielded the lowest error (CV NRMSE = 0.087) and demonstrated good generalization on the held-out test set (Test NRMSE = 0.149). These validated ML models provide packaging professionals with data driven tools to predict BCT loss due to pallet overhang, enabling sustainable, reliable and optimized packaging system design.