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Category: All Libraries

The STARS of Thesis & Dissertations

Students at UCF work on all kinds of interesting creative projects and research. UCF Libraries has the privilege of being able to house physical and digital copies of decades of research done by students and faculty.  

STARS is UCF’s Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship, and is home to scholarship and creative works done by students and faculty across disciplines. STARS provides an option for contributors to share their work while retaining their copyright. Most items in STARS are freely available to users around the world. Materials can be browsed College, Department, or individual collection: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/communities.html

Users can browse all Theses and Dissertations completed at UCF, including everything from a political science paper about the 2020 Presidential primaries and the Democratic Party’s influence to a Communication paper on the effects of social media on mental health. College and Department level collections are also available, as well as a browsable collection of Advisors and Chairs

We’ve also curated a list of some of the many interesting works by students in the History Department, Creative Writing program, College of Sciences, and College of Nursing below:  

History 

Pestilence and Poverty: The Great Influenza Pandemic and Underdevelopment in the New South, 1918-1919 by Andrew Kishuni 

Farm Women as Producers & Consumers in the 20th Century U.S. South by Joseph J. Kaminski 

Rebuilt and Remade: The Florida Citrus Industry, 1909-1939 by James Padgett  

Hippieland: Bohemian Space and Countercultural Place in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood by Kevin Mercer 

Mass Media and the Evolution of the Environmental Movement: 1960-1979 by Donald Anguish 

Creative Writing 

Golden Years by Sienna Malik 

Tourist Trap: On Being Raised In Award-winning Sand by Catherine Jane Carson 

According to the Gospel of Haunted Women by Judith Roney  

Assisted Living: Stories by Donovan Swift 

I Have Questions by Lorena Matejowsky 

Migrant Child by Nicholas Shepherd 

College of Sciences 

A Socio-Economic Assessment of Marine Turtle Eco-tourism by Kendra Cope (2015) 

Impact of Increased Green Turtle Nesting on Loggerhead Fitness by Amanda R. Carmichael (2018) 

It’s Just a Bad Period” and Other Ways of Dismissing Women’s Pain: An Ethnographic Look into the Experience of Endometriosis by Seline Hays 

Impact of Work-Life Balance on Health-Related Quality of Life Among College Students by Emily Vernet 

Experiences of Young Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Latinx People in Healthcare by Caleb Hernandez  

Whose Sustainability? An Analysis of a Community Farming Program’s Food Justice and Environmental Sustainability Agenda by Sarah Davenport  

College of Nursing 

Exploring the Different Factors Associated with Burnout by Natassja J. DeBra 

As we continue to share UCF Library’s online resources, we hope that you find new ways to engage with your fellow Knights across disciplines and genres. 

Downtown Library Book Club: The Glass Castle

The second meeting of the Downtown Library virtual book club will be on July 29th at 6:00pm. We will be discussing The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, a memoir of love, resilience, and the curses and blessings of growing up with intensely nonconforming parents. 

Join us and share your thoughts, feelings, and discussion points. Your hosts will have some questions prepared to prompt discussion, but feel free to ask your own! If you would like to read The Glass Castle online, there is a free full-text version available on the Internet Archive. 


Please sign up here to receive a Zoom meeting invitation. We look forward to seeing you on July 29th!

Summer Knight Reading Challenge

The 2020 Summer Knights Reading Challenge kicks off on June 1st and ends on August 1st. This year’s challenge will be a book bingo, with each square consisting of a different genre or category. Participants will receive brand new UCF themed coloring pages and bingo winners will receive a limited edition sticker. 

The challenge is open to all UCF students, faculty, and staff as well as those from the Downtown Valencia Campus. For more information and to sign up to participate, visit our 2020 Summer Knights Reading Challenge libguide. A link to the bingo card and coloring pages will be emailed to those who sign up.

Take Your Research to the Next Level

Calling all graduate students! Are you ready to take your research to the next level?

Jumpstart your summer research & publishing projects by attending our online workshop series! Learn what you need to know to plan & research sources for literature reviews, use tools to manage and format sources, and identify factors to consider when submitting your work for publication.

May/June Series Dates:
Library & Literature Review Research
Wednesday, May 27 from 4:00 – 5:00 pm

Citation Management
Tuesday, June 2 from 12:00 – 1:00 pm

Selecting Journals to Publish Your Research
Wednesday, June 10 from 4:00 – 5:00 pm

June/July Series Dates:
Library & Literature Review Research
Thursday, June 25 from 12:00 – 1:00 pm

Citation Management
Friday, July 10 from 12:00 – 1:00 pm

Selecting Journals to Publish Your Research
Thursday, July 16 from 12:00 – 1:00 pm


For details about sessions and registration, see https://guides.ucf.edu/graduateworkshops

Thanks to OCLS

The CMC Library would like to thank the Orange County Library System for their generous contribution of Virtual Library Card logins for our School of Teacher Education students. During these remote instruction sessions, access to PreK-12 ebooks has become a priority. OCLS stepped in and has supported our students with this need. If you are a School of Teacher Education student and would like an OCLS Virtual Library Card login, please email CMC@ucf.edu. Logins will be provided while supplies last.

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