ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst

We are now able to accept submissions directly in ScholarWorks. For submissions that are not doctoral dissertations or masters theses, please log in with your NetID, click the + (plus) in to the top left corner, and select the Submit Research option.

Graduate students: Directions for submissions can be found in this guide. Please email scholarworks@library.umass.edu if you have any questions.

UMass users: If a dissertation or thesis is campus only, you may download it directly from ScholarWorks after logging in with your NetID.

Please see our ScholarWorks guide for more information about submitting your work to ScholarWorks.

Featured Items

Data Do's and Don'ts: A Primer on Indigenous Data Sovereignty

Anderson, Jane; Smith, Vanessa

2026

A Mighty Event: Eight Lessons Learned by Bringing People Together Through Music to Support Our Mission

White, Caroline J.; Fill, Kim D.

On the evening of November 7, 2025, the University Libraries at the University of Massachusetts Amherst held its annual Fall Reception, attended by an audience of 300. “An Evening with Folk New England: A Tribute to Eric von Schmidt” represented both a return to the longstanding tradition of an event held to showcase the Libraries while thanking our donors for all they make possible and an exceptionally successful and memorable version of that event. Celebrating the partnership of Folk New England and the Libraries' Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, the event generated so much interest that it was ultimately moved to a larger venue, and the move impacted all aspects of the event. Although the planning team cannot count on replicating the event or its impact in the near future, the team took away many lessons from the planning and pivoting, as well as from the event itself.

2026-03-19

Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change Research to Practice Paper: Rock you like a hurricane: The perfect storm for an invasion

Putnam, Aly B.; Al-Shayeb, Sofia M. A.; Buonaiuto, Daniel M.; Daniel, Wesley; Geiger, Megan Lynn; Lieurance, Deah; Parsons, Elliott W.; Pfingsten, Ian; Williams-Soriano, John Paul; Evans, Annette E.

Hurricanes (also called typhoons or cyclones) and other rare weather occurrences are increasing in intensity and frequency with global climate change. These extreme weather events can drastically alter ecosystems in ways that directly or indirectly facilitate the introduction, establishment, spread, and impacts of invasive species. For example, high winds or flood waters during hurricanes can disperse invasives and displace native species. Impacts could also occur after the main storm event; invasive species can invade during relief efforts or establish more easily in disturbed habitats [1,2]. Various possible mechanisms link hurricanes and invasive species (Figure 1). To identify shared challenges as well as region-specific dynamics and possible impacts, we highlight case studies from the Southeast, Pacific Islands, Caribbean, and Northeast regions of the United States (Table 1). By synthesizing examples across diverse ecological and management contexts, this summary can help practitioners anticipate common mechanisms of spread and consider strategies that could be implemented before and after hurricane events to manage vulnerable species, habitats, and ecosystems.

2026

Recent Submissions

Open Access
The Maya Effect: Theorizing Beyond Matthew and Matilda Effects to an Intersectional Understanding of Collaboration
(Sage, 2026) Mickey, Ethel; Misra, Joya; Smith-Doerr, Laurel; Kane-Lee, Ember Skye
In research and academic work, not everyone gets equal credit when working in teams. For a long time, experts have explained this using two ideas: the Matthew Effect, where famous or high-status people get more credit than they deserve, and the Matilda Effect, where women often get less credit and are overlooked in collaborations. This study looks deeper by focusing on the experiences of women faculty of color in universities. We interviewed 62 women of color and compared their stories with those of white women, men of color, and white men in similar academic positions. From these interviews, we developed a new concept: the Maya Effect. The Maya Effect shows how both race and gender together affect how credit is shared in research teams. Women of color often face unique challenges in collaborations, such as having their contributions ignored, being excluded from important decisions, or having to constantly prove their value. Unlike older theories that focus mostly on status or gender, the Maya Effect highlights how racial and gender inequalities work together. It also shows that these issues aren’t just about final credit, but about ongoing interactions within research teams. To truly understand inequality in science and academia, we need to move beyond the Matthew and Matilda effects. The Maya Effect helps us see how race and gender shape who gets to collaborate, who gets listened to, and who gets credit.
Open Access
13 Effective Strategies for Better Faculty Hiring and Retention
(2026-04-14) Mitchneck, Beth; Misra, Joya; Austin, Anne E.; Smith, Jessi L.; Goodwin, Stephanie A.
The authors analyzed articles, other published documents and evaluation reports about the impact of ADVANCE funding at colleges and universities. We found strong evidence that research-based organizational change strategies benefited women and men faculty across all fields. Rather than “fixing the women,” ADVANCE fixed institutions, thereby benefiting all faculty. This piece summarizes evidence-based strategies and publicly available tools, tested and developed through ADVANCE, which can help colleges and universities through chaotic times. We group together the 13 strategies under faculty success topics.
Open Access
Rethinking Long Term Municipal Water Demand Projections: From Deep Uncertainty to Dynamic, Data-Driven Analysis
(2026-02) Bruce, Alexa
Long-term urban water demand forecasting remains a central yet unresolved challenge for water-utility planning. Despite its importance for capital investment, drought preparedness, and financial strategy, forecasting practice has advanced little in recent decades and continues to rely on short, local historical records, deterministic projections, and simplified assumptions about how demand evolves over time. These approaches obscure structural uncertainty, fail to represent the dynamic interactions between demand, pricing, and hydrologic conditions, and rarely evaluate predictive performance under true out-of-sample conditions. This dissertation examines these limitations and develops three complementary methodological contributions to strengthen long-term demand analysis under uncertainty. The first paper develops a stress-testing framework that explicitly characterises multiple sources of uncertainty in long-term demand models, including uncertainty in model structure, exogenous drivers, and behavioural elasticity parameters. Rather than seeking a single authoritative forecast, the framework propagates these uncertainties through a representative econometric model to generate an ensemble of plausible demand trajectories. Global sensitivity analysis and scenario-discovery methods are then used to quantify the contribution of individual uncertainties and to identify combinations of conditions that give rise to high or otherwise operationally challenging demand futures. This provides a quantitative basis for understanding the breadth and structure of uncertainty in long-term demand forecasts. The second paper develops a dynamic modelling framework that represents demand as an endogenous component of the socio-hydrologic-financial system within which utilities operate. Using state-transition models that incorporate drought restrictions, pricing responses, and behavioural persistence, the study shows how long-term consumption evolves through interactions between demand, policy, and hydrologic conditions. The results demonstrate that static forecasting models systematically mischaracterise these dynamics, leading to biased long-range projections. The third paper evaluates long-term forecasting performance using pooled, multi-utility datasets and non-parametric machine-learning methods. By testing models on utilities not included in their training data, the study provides one of the first systematic assessments of out-of-sample predictive skill for long-term urban water demand. The results show that models calibrated on single-utility datasets generalise poorly, whereas pooled-data machine-learning approaches substantially improve predictive accuracy. Together, these contributions establish a stress-testing framework that fully characterises uncertainty in long-term demand models and supports the informed construction of scenarios for use in broader analyses of water-resource system performance.
Open Access
MINDFULNESS USE FOR ADULT AND CHILD SELF-REGULATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD SETTINGS
(2026-02) Bockmann, Jill Oliphant
Self-regulation development during early childhood predicts social competence, emotion well-being, academic success, and peer acceptance. Social emotional learning curricula target self-regulation skills as one essential component in social competence. Adults in children’s day to day lives can support or undermine self-regulation development, as they serve as role models, social references, and social scaffolds for children. Adult stress, coping, and confidence can influence children’s self-regulation development. This study examined the use of mindfulness based practices (MBP) in early childhood settings to support self-regulation development. Twelve early childhood educators completed prescreening surveys and participated in semi-structured interviews designed to collect data regarding the purposes, components, and perceived outcomes of using MBP in their classrooms. Data indicated that teachers used MBP in the classroom to build self-regulation via self-awareness and co-regulation. MBP were used to reduce stress in the classroom for both teachers and children. Teachers viewed MBP as useful tools for supporting parents and other adults in the classroom, as well as in development of behavior plans and IEPs and building their own awareness of bias against specific students or behaviors. Data also indicated that MBP supported the self-efficacy of teachers and children. The study includes limitations and implications for practice and future research.
Open Access
Principal Beliefs and Attitudes: Planning and Action for Improving Instructional Quality in Rural Districts in Massachusetts, with a Focus on Teacher Evaluation
(2026-02) Blake-Davis, Leslie
My dissertation investigates how principals in rural Massachusetts districts seek to improve instructional practices, focusing on the implementation of teacher evaluation. It examines how their beliefs and attitudes shape their planning and actions within an environment influenced by various stakeholder expectations and demands. Additionally, this study highlights how principals navigate the challenges of using teacher evaluation as a tool for school improvement, considering characteristics commonly found in rural school settings, though not necessarily unique. Essentially, I aim to understand how principals' beliefs and attitudes drive their actions and to identify patterns in strategic planning related to the teacher evaluation process in rural schools, which can inform the development of tailored professional support for rural principals. My findings indicate that, overall, principals in rural areas tend to plan and act in ways that extract value from the teacher evaluation process, aiming to improve instruction. Their strategic decisions aligned with their beliefs and tended to emphasize the context of their schools. Specifically, I discovered that principals in rural schools focus on building trust and creating opportunities for teachers to collaborate regarding teacher evaluation. My evidence also indicated that, due to the remoteness often characteristic of rural schools, they tended to view teacher expertise as a key component of this process. They reported actively seeking involvement from teachers to help carry out their responsibilities related to teacher evaluation. My evidence also indicates that as principals develop strategies for teacher evaluation, they manage a complex array of expectations driven by local policies and state laws aimed at promoting high-quality instruction. Essentially, they continuously balance teachers' individual instructional needs with these expectations by creating allowable variances (an affordance of the system) and employing context-setting strategies to adapt their practices.

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