Digital Commons Network^™

Riding Through The Great Depression: The Impact Of Pack Horse Librarians, Madison G. Reed

Young Historians Conference

Supported by Eleanor Roosevelt and the Roosevelt Administration during the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was part of Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup” agencies. It didn’t take long for the WPA, which sought to provide work, education, and culture to Americans who were struggling economically, to introduce the Pack Horse Library Project to rural Eastern Kentucky. The Pack Horse Librarians were local women hired by the federal government to bring reading material to isolated, unemployed people and children of all ages. Both secondary scholarship, focused on the role Pack Horse Librarians played in the development of community, as well as …

Reflecting Life Back: The Influence Of Mirrors On Human World History, Helen F. Cruz-Uribe Bandstra

Young Historians Conference

Ten thousand years ago, humans first created mirrors. They were developed simultaneously all over the world, reflecting the innate human desire to see something so close to us, yet so hard to view. Our own face. While this invention had a simple initial purpose, it quickly became tied to many of the more complicated developments of human life, including, but not limited to, religion, power, and technology. We see this reflected in everything from the polished obsidian mirrors of Mesoamerica, used to commune with the gods and revered for their reflectiveness, to the bronze mirrors of Greece used in early …

From Prison Cells To Parliament: How The H-Block Hunger Strikes Transformed Sinn Féin To Enable Peace In Northern Ireland, Madeleine E. Wallenberg

Young Historians Conference

The 1988 Good Friday Agreement signed in Belfast is regarded as a landmark feat of diplomacy. Allowing for a non-violent redistribution of power, the Good Friday Agreement marked the end of a nearly thirty-year period of violence known as The Troubles. The efficacy of this agreement relied on the participation of members of the I.R.A. and Sinn Féin, something that likely would not have happened if not for a 1981 Hunger Strike that changed the public’s perception of the Irish Republican movement and launched the platform for Sinn Féin as a legitimate political organization. This paper explores the development of …

Form Follows Function: An Analysis Of De Architectura And Its Influence, Weston Klein

Young Historians Conference

Over 2000 years ago, the Roman architect and engineer, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, scribed De Architectura, a multi-volume work unearthed in the 15th century, in St. Gallen, Switzerland. As the only surviving architectural source from antiquity, the book has been indispensable in the study of Greco-Roman architecture, positioning Vitruvian and Greco-Roman architectural concepts in many ways as one in the same. Additionally, Vitruvian ideas, as expressed in De Architectura, regarding architectural form, materials, location, and process have been foundational to the evolution of Western architecture. This paper explores De Architectura’s impact on Western architectural theory and practice spanning the Early Middle …

35th Annual Young Historians Conference Program, Portland State University History Department, Portland State University Challenge Program

Young Historians Conference

This is the 2025 Young Historians Conference schedule and abstracts.

Seeking Common Ground With A Conversational Chatbot, Judit Dombi, Tetyana Sydorenko, Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Conversational AI is advancing rapidly, enabling significant improvements in chatbots’ conversational abilities. Currently, available conversational chatbots (e.g., Snapchat’s MyAI) appear to generate fairly realistic, often human-like output. As collaboration between humans and machines becomes more common, and AI systems are increasingly viewed as more than just tools, understanding human communication in such contexts is crucial. Despite the vast array of applications and the increasing number of human-bot interactions, research on how humans interact with conversational chatbots is scarce. One possible reason for this gap is that studying human-computer communication may require adaptations of existing pragmatic frameworks, due to the unique …

Evaluating Nature-Based Versus Generic Physical Activity Programs To Address Chronic Health Conditions: Lessons From An Oregon (Usa) Pilot Study, Randall Bluffstone, Ma Chan, Cort Cox, Melinda M. Davis, Caitlin Dickinson, Sahan T. M. Dissanayake, Jeffrey D. Kline, Himani Ojha, Sterling Stokes, Srilakshmi Vedantam, Multiple Additional Authors

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Evidence appears to be building that direct exposure to natural landscapes characterized by significant green cover, such as forests, can help to reduce chronic health conditions such as obesity, stress, hypertension, chronic cardiovascular conditions, depression, anxiety, cancer, and diabetes. One way to encourage greater exposure to nature may be through the use of nature prescriptions, whereby clinicians formally recommend (or prescribe) time in nature to their patients. Based on self-reported data, we describe the implementation and lessons learned from a pilot field experiment examining the clinical use of nature-based versus conventional exercise recommendations in rural Oregon. We discuss the potential …

A Case For Change: Flood Risk Management And Green Infrastructure, Heejun Chang, Arun Pallathadka

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

With climate change, changing demographics, and the historical legacy of aging infrastructure, many cities are facing challenges in urban flood risk management. We propose potential opportunities and synergies of collaborative urban flood risk management using green infrastructure to achieve social, ecological, and technological benefits.

Development Scenarios And Wildfire Risk In Central Oregon, Samantha Hall

Dissertations and Theses

Risk from natural hazards occurs where areas vulnerable to natural hazards and development intersect. Development in vulnerable areas is a societal choice that has a lasting impact as our built environment is relatively permanent. Development patterns that contribute to increased wildfire risk mostly occur within the wildland urban interface, a land use type where development is at the fringes or intercept of wildland areas and is more flammable due to surrounding vegetation, slope, local climate, and other factors. To understand how past and future development potentials may impact fire risk in wildfire prone areas, a case study of Deschutes County, …

Geography Of Non-Daytime Work And Employer-Centered Transit Accessibility, Julia Mai Plotts

Dissertations and Theses

Non-daytime shift workers--including those on evening, night, rotating, and split shifts--face unique transportation challenges. Those who rely on public transit often contend with complicated commutes and longer wait times on public transit systems that have traditionally catered to the 9-to-5 workforce. Meanwhile, the non-daytime workforce is disproportionately composed of marginalized groups, including low-income workers, racial and ethnic minorities, and individuals with fewer education credentials. For many lower-income workers, car ownership does not present a viable alternative, as cost-of-ownership consumes a significant portion of their income. This makes access to nighttime public transit a critical equity concern. However, most transit accessibility …

Activity Levels Among Older Adults In A Life Plan Community, Emily D. Winters

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

This study aimed to analyze resident's knowledge of the health and wellness programs available to them in their facility. It explored activity levels, preferred activity methods, and health and wellness program utilization among older adults residing in a life-plan community. A total of 166 survey respondents, aged 65 and older, were included in the analysis. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire designed to assess physical activity patterns, preferences for activity types, and engagement with the facility’s health and wellness offerings. Open-ended questions were assessed qualitatively through thematic analysis to find common themes within data. Results indicated that the most …

Primary Health Care: Strengthening Health Systems In Low- And Middle-Income Countries, Erin Young

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

In recent decades, global health priorities have shifted away from promoting selective, donor-led interventions and towards the goal of strengthening primary health care systems in low- and middle-income countries. This project seeks to identify recommendations for and best practices of primary health care system development from the existing literature. A critical literature review was conducted using the Ovid-MEDLINE database to identify articles that focused on primary health care, included recommendations for health systems strengthening, and addressed low- and middle-income countries. Ultimately, 27 articles published between 2004 and 2019 were included in this review. Results suggest that important priorities for building …

Addressing The Promise And Peril Of Ai For Nonprofit Management Through A Data Feminist Pedagogy, Billie Sandberg, Rafeel Wasif, Laura C. Hand

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up possibilities for nonprofit management, and practitioners are taking notice. A recent study revealed that nearly 90% of nonprofit organizations are interested in using AI (MacDonald, Citation2023). Another study indicated that more than half of the nonprofits surveyed use AI to support finance, human resources, communications, and mission-related (i.e., working with clients, program implementation, and grantmaking) functions (Herschander, Citation2024). Indeed, many of us likely know student-practitioners and nonprofit colleagues who leverage AI to help write donor thank-you notes, newsletters, grant proposals, and press releases and who work for nonprofits that incorporate chatbots …

Acompañamiento And Assessment: Examples Of Community Building Through Assignments In A First-Year Class, Shaianne Tran, Hector Amezola, Dalissa Rodriguez, Morgan Baird, Jennifer Fuentes Luna, Alejandra Vazquez, Fattemah Zia, David Peterson Del Mar

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

This collection of seven diverse assignments written by students from under-represented communities for a first-year inquiry class on immigration, migration, and belonging illustrates how instructors can facilitate a sense of belonging or acompañamiento through course assignments, assessment instruments. Each of the student authors provides a retrospective introduction on how their personal reflection, essay, or research project helped them to make personal connections within or outside of the class. The instructor provides a brief introduction to the concept of acompañamiento and why it is particularly important for New Majority college students.

Rupert Raj’S Written Acts Of Activism And Care Throughout The 1980s And 1990s, Mia Jakobsen

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

In researching acts of activism and care in Canadian queer and trans racialized history, I examined how Rupert Raj advocated and cared for other trans individuals through his writing in the 1980s and 1990s. He noticed that there were few publications for trans individuals so he created easily accessible methods to share vital information regarding research and support that would have otherwise been difficult to acquire. Raj’s writings shared vital transgender research, literature, and expertise from across the globe. He provided critical support to and for other trans men through his easily accessible publications and letters, serving as an information …

Inciting Action By Analyzing Pachirat, Rhi N. Soto

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

The book Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight by Timothy Pachirat explores “the politics of sight”, or the intentional invisibilizing or transparentizing of repugnant acts in order to encourage or limit them, through the case study of a beef slaughter house in Omaha, NE. While also utilizing the politics of sight, Pachirat hopes for great political and social change concerning the immoral acts that happen at meat plants through a radical act of transparency: a narrative ethnography. Writers with similar goals of great change in social and political issues can make use of Pachirat’s techniques, which …

An Equitable End: Meeting The Needs Of Queer Families Within Deathcare, Nyssa Peck

University Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to explore end-of-life care experiences of queer families, focusing on interactions with palliative and hospice caregivers. Currently, end-of-life (EOL) practitioners in institutional and medical care settings are often poorly equipped to interact with queer families due to inadequate cultural training models, personal biases, and ignorance regarding the queer identities of their clients. This manifests in substantial inequities within deathcare systems regarding the accommodation of the unique needs of queer familial structures. Drawing upon multidisciplinary scholarship, I sought to examine these needs, which diverge from that of heterosexual families due to queer families’ absence of legal protections and …

Tiered Clinician Vaccine Communication Strategy To Improve Childhood Vaccine Uptake: A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial., Douglas J. Opel, Jeffrey D. Robinson, Chuan Zhou, Kathryn Colborn, Heather Spielvogle, Anna Furniss, Christine Spina, Cathryn Perreira, Sean T. O'Leary

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

No experimental studies to date have tested the effectiveness of clinician communication strategies to improve vaccine uptake among children of parents with negative vaccine attitudes.

Beyond The Bickering: Examining Event, Victim, And Offender Characteristics For Sibling Abuse Incidents In Oregon, Isabella M. Starr

University Honors Theses

Sibling violence (SV) is the most prevalent form of intrafamilial and domestic violence, yet it remains underrecognized and lacks the systematic attention given to other forms of family violence. Often minimized or misclassified as typical sibling rivalry, SV can inflict serious and lasting physical, emotional, and psychological harm on its victims. This study explores the characteristics of sibling violence incidents reported to law enforcement in Oregon between 2016 and 2023, using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Through an analysis of 5,793 single-victim, single-offender incidents, the research examines demographic patterns among victims and offenders, incident dynamics, and typological …

Disrupting The Abuse-Prison Nexus: The Gendered Violence Of Prosecution And Abolitionist Feminist Approaches To Social Care Work, Sid P. Jordan, Emily Thuma, Aylaliyah Assefa Birru, Deirdre Wilson, Romarilyn Ralston, Norma Cumpian, Joseph Hankins

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

The vast majority of people in U.S. women’s prisons are survivors of interpersonal violence, a pattern that organizers and advocates have referred to as the abuse-to-prison pipeline. This article critically examines criminal prosecution from the perspectives of survivors of interpersonal violence who faced long prison sentences in California. In-depth interviews and group discussions were generated through a participatory process at a gathering to launch the University of California Sentencing Project, a partnership with the community-based organization California Coalition for Women Prisoners. The twenty-two formerly incarcerated participants had collectively spent more than 300 years imprisoned. Drawing on their lived experiences spanning …

Collaboration Through Trust Building: Building Trust Among Racialized And Stigmatized Nonprofits, Shariq Siddiqui, Abdul Samad, Rafeel Wasif

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nonprofits collaborate to resolve common issues while improving program effectiveness and reducing replication. These collaborations can be critical for minority nonprofits in resolving their common problems. However, while literature often looks at nonprofit organizations working with the government or other organizations, it does not focus on how minority nonprofits can collaborate better with other minority organizations. Using Muslim American nonprofits as a case study, we understand better how trust can be built between nonprofits belonging to marginalized communities. We focus on the Community Collaboration Initiative, a three-year third-party-facilitated collaboration effort among Muslim-American nonprofits. Overall, Interpersonal relationships, organizational learning, and positive …

Between Fire And Water: Miyazawa Kenji's Reimagining Of Opposites In Ginga Tetsudō No Yoru, Taishi Neilsen

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores how Japanese writer Miyazawa Kenji playfully uses opposites and binaries to create thematic richness in his famous children's story Ginga tetsudō no yoru (Night on the Milky Way Railroad). Despite being a children's book, the text works with mature themes such as loneliness, grief, and purpose, themes which are elevated through Kenji's idiosyncratic stylings. Through a close reading of the original Japanese text, the author isolates moments where Kenji conveys his Nichiren Buddhist worldview as part of his proselytizing mission, as well as moments that increase thematic richness, resulting in a multifaceted text that continues …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On The United States Higher Education System, Phoenix Daniel Van Wormer

University Honors Theses

In the spring of 2020, colleges across the United States rapidly transitioned to online/remote learning during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Since then, online and remote learning have evolved into an integral component of higher education. This thesis examines the extent to which COVID-19-mandated remote and online learning impacted students pursuing higher education in the United States. By utilizing research that compares academic structures before and after the pandemic, I demonstrate how the shift to online and remote learning has changed teaching and learning methods. I also evaluate the impact of these changes on student performance and engagement, with particular focus …

From Farm To Friend: Fostering Compassion Toward Farmed Animals Through Design, Natalie Kosmos

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores how human compassion for farmed animals can be fostered through design. By analyzing the existing language, imagery, and social norms surrounding animal commodification, the research highlights the root of the issue: how humans perceive farmed animals in relation to themselves. Understanding how humans view and think about farmed animals is important for creating a message that disrupts these existing norms. The culmination of this thesis is a campaign, "From Farm to Friend" which is designed to be approachable and informative, encouraging the audience to have compassion for farmed animals and change their perception, from farm--to friend.

Working Paper No. 93, The Father, The Son, And The ‘Sulphuric’ Spirit: Reflections Upon Gunnar Myrdal's Early Writings Dealing With J. M. Keynes, Plus The ‘Great Recession’, Niccolo Cellini

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry explores Gunnar Myrdal's contributions to counter-cyclical fiscal policy, emphasizing his belief in accumulating surpluses during economic growth and deploying them during downturns. The first section discusses Myrdal's critique of traditional austerity measures, advocating for transparency in deficit spending and highlighting the psychological impact of fiscal policy. The second section compares Myrdal’s views with John Maynard Keynes’, noting their shared concerns regarding unemployment while emphasizing Myrdal's focus on social equity and institutional reform. The final section applies Myrdal’s framework to the U.S. response to the Great Recession, analyzing the limitations of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and …

Signifying Improvement: Reform Symbols As Discursive Practice In School Improvement Plans, Madhu Narayanan, Matthew S. Mccluskey

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

School Improvement Plans (SIPs) have been shown to be generally of poor quality and written more as acts of compliance than efforts at genuine reform. This raises the question: if SIPs are ineffective at improving schools, what is their larger purpose? In this conceptual paper, we argue that SIPs are discursive sites where schools can signal their adherence to ostensibly proven and acceptable models of reform. They do so through the use of reform symbols, discursive markers that signal legitimized organizational change through the adoption of accepted modes of improvement. We illustrate this concept by showing how a variety of …

Managing A Lake That Flows Both Ways, Katie Rodriguez, Tim Clark, Rob Zisette

Urban Ecosystem Research Consortium of Portland/Vancouver

Vancouver Lake, an urban eutrophic lake in Vancouver, WA, is considered a regional “gem” but, despite decades of research and restoration efforts, the lake and its users continue to suffer from a variety of issues including annual toxic HABs and noxious aquatic weeds. Championed by the local Friends of Vancouver Lake group, the state legislature has awarded Clark County funds to restore Vancouver Lake through the development and implementation of a management plan.

Development of the 2023 Vancouver Lake Management Plan (VLMP) included engaging technical experts and local stakeholders, and evaluating feasible management alternatives using lake modeling and cost-effectiveness analyses. …

Proceedings Of The 23rd Annual Urban Ecology & Conservation Symposium March 17, 2025, Urban Ecosystem Research Consortium Of Portland/Vancouver

Urban Ecosystem Research Consortium of Portland/Vancouver

These proceedings document the agenda and abstracts for presentations and posters from the 23rd annual conference organized by the Urban Ecosystem Research Consortium of Portland/Vancouver (UERC) which occurred on March 17, 2025. The UERC is a consortium of people from various universities and colleges, state and federal agencies, local governments, non-profit organizations and independent professionals interested in supporting urban ecosystem research and creating an information-sharing network of people that collect and use ecological data in the Portland/Vancouver area. The annual conference has an open call for abstracts. The UERC organizing committee selects the final oral and poster presentations, along with …

Enhancing Discoverability: Transitioning A Board Game Collection From A Libguide To A Collectionbuilder Site, Hanwen Dong, Perri Moreno, Tyler Rodriguez, Julia Stone

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

As board game collections continue to grow in popularity at academic institutions, the University of Idaho Library wanted to establish an accessible and easy-to-use discovery tool for its physical game collection. At the collections’ origins, a LibGuide was created by librarians for this purpose, but as the collection records continued to grow into the triple digits, something more adaptable and customizable was necessary. In the summer of 2023, a team of librarians came together to build a custom site to house the game collection’s information using CollectionBuilder, an open-source framework for digital collections and exhibits websites that are driven by …

Gait Characteristics In People With Friedreich Ataxia: Daily Life Versus Clinic Measures, Hannah L. Casey, Vrutangkumar V. Shah, Daniel Muzyka, James Mcnames, Mahmoud El-Gohary, Kristen Sowalsky, Delaram Safarpour, Patricia Carlson-Kuhta, Christian Rummey, Fay B. Horak, Christopher M. Gomez

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Gait assessments in a clinical setting may not accurately reflect mobility in everyday life. To better understand gait during daily life, we compared measures that discriminated Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) from healthy control (HC) subjects in prescribed clinic tests and free, daily-life monitoring.MethodsWe recruited 9 people with FRDA (median age: 20, IQR [12, 48] years). A comparative healthy control (HC) subject cohort of 9 was sampled using propensity matching on age (median age: 18 [13, 22] years). Subjects wore 3 inertial sensors (one each foot and lower back) in the laboratory during a 2-min walk at a natural pace, followed by …