Digital Commons Network^™

The Allegory Of United States Settlers V. Native Americans In Wes Craven's The Hills Haves Eyes (1977), Blue Van Alst

University Honors Theses

The year 1977 saw the release of Wes Craven’s second major production, The Hills Have Eyes. A film that sits within a filmic library of Craven that works to use the horror genre to reflect on and critique the American society that he lived in. The Hills Have Eyes employs the stereotypes that the films of John Ford helped to solidify in U.S. society. He does this in order to explore the tense historical relationships between Indigenous and United States settlers during the time of westward expansion. Using the white middle class Carter family to serve as settlers, and …

“For The Right To Live”: Radical Activity In Portland’S Parks During The Great Depression, Eliana Bane

Anthós

During the Great Depression, Portland's working class joined in the national surge of radicalism to fight for economic relief and social justice. One of organized labor’s most effective strategies was to stage mass demonstrations in highly visible public spaces, such as Plaza Park adjacent City Hall in downtown. Rallying in city parks represented workers’ determination to exercise their free speech in spite of Red Scare suppression of leftist radicals. This essay explores the role of public parks in the history of the labor movement in Portland during the Depression, primarily focusing on Plaza Park since it was a hub for …

Back To Nature: Marie Antionette And The Cottagecore Fantasy, Rose Caughie

Anthós

This essay is an examination of the legacy of Marie Antionette's Chemise a la Reine. At the end of the 18th century, a portrait of the queen in this dress caused scandal and outrage. Despite, or perhaps because of this, the Chemise a la Reine became a staple in the wardrobe of the Western woman. Today, this style continues to be popular. This is particularly notable in the Cottagecore aesthetic movement. Much like Marie Antionette's use of this style, Cottagecore fashion carries deep ties to an escapist pastoral fantasy. However, more important is the continued legacy of Neoclassicism and the …

Nella Larsen’S Passing: Ambiguous Symbology & Weather, Sara Casten

Anthós

Nella Larsen wrote Passing in 1929, a novella that explored the relationship between two women of mixed race: Irene and Clare. This article highlights the complimentary weather elements with the emotional turbulence experienced by Irene as she tells the story; Clare’s warmth and beauty to Irene’s cold and lack thereof. This article also explores the skills of Larsen to write these ambiguous complimentary weather elements in Passing by highlighting her other novella Quicksand, published the year before.

Dinesen’S Diana: The Transformative Power Of Symbols In Ehrengard, Aishwarya A. Marathe

Anthós

This analysis of Dinesen's Ehrengard aims to illuminate the subversive transformation of the titular character of the novel, using the literal and symbolic application of artistic power.

Diabolical Or Masculine Men? Opposing Views Of Male Witches In Early Modern England, Giuliana T. Mintiero

Anthós

Accused witches in early modern England were predominantly female, with historians often connecting the witches’ gender to these accusations. However, a small but substantial number of males were also accused of witchcraft. This has sparked debate in the discourse community over whether gender plays a role in witchcraft accusations against males. In their respective articles, witchcraft scholars Millar and Kent both ask how ordinary people during the English witchcraft trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries viewed males accused of witchcraft, arriving at very different conclusions. Millar determines that male witches’ gender is not important, while Kent decides that it …

“Who Is Here To Help?” Exploring Informal Teacher Mentorship: A Call For Study, Steve W. Johnson

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

The high attrition rates of teachers in the initial phases of their career is a well-documented problem that school districts around the United States have been grappling with for decades with limited success (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2019; Ingersoll, 2003). The COVID pandemic has also increased the attrition of experienced teachers with 55% of teachers reporting that they are more likely to leave the profession before reaching retirement age than they were before the pandemic (Jotkoff, 2022). Mentorship programs that place new teachers with experienced teachers is one solution that school districts in one state have implemented to increase …

Teaching Content Methods In A High School Pds: Navigating Curricular Tensions, Richard Chant, Brian P. Zoellner

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

As secondary methods instructors, we seek to integrate our courses within the context of our partner high school and to engage its staff in helping prepare our students. State and district mandates, however, often conflict with the pedagogy and content that guides our methods courses. In short, these mandates, whose ultimate goals are to increase student scores on high-stakes tests (especially at Title I schools), frequently do not align with the best practices described in contemporary educational research. In this article, we examine a highly rated unit plan developed by one teacher education candidate within a PDS-based methods course in …

2023 Commencement Program, Commencement

Commencement Archives 2020-29

The complete program for Portland State University's Spring 2023 Commencement ceremonies:

College of the Arts: June 16, 2023, PSU Viking Pavilion

College of Urban and Public Affairs, Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, School of Social Work, and the School of Business: June 18, 2023, Moda Center, Portland, Oregon

College of Education and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: June 18, 2023, Moda Center, Portland, Oregon

The Association Of Patient-Provider Language Concordance With Healthcare Comprehension Among Latino/As In Oregon, Grace Parra

University Honors Theses

Background: The purpose of this study is to describe the need and preferences among Mexican-origin Latinos in Oregon for language-concordant healthcare providers. We hypothesize that the presence of a language concordant provider is associated with greater health care comprehension.

Methods: This is a cross sectional study in collaboration with the General Consulate of Mexico. We developed a 20-item survey that includes questions about socio-demographics, a validated language-based acculturation scale, and questions regarding language concordant care experience and preferences used in previous studies. We are recruiting at the Mexican Consulate 500 Latino/as ages 18 or older who had a healthcare visit …

The Impact Of Period Poverty On Low-Income Adolescents In The United States, Makayla Olson

University Honors Theses

Period poverty is an issue that impacts menstruators globally. This creates a significant health disparity for menstruators, including difficulties accessing menstrual products, inadequate menstrual and puberty health education, and shame and stigma that come from societal misunderstandings and misinformation regarding menstruation. This paper examines the effects of period poverty on low-income adolescents in the United States. It looks at the current literature that addresses how the financial and accessibility barriers that cause period poverty, as well as how these causes impact school-aged menstruators. It aims to address the role that schools play in creating safe environments for menstruators, including staff …

Pleurotus Spp. As Agents Of Mycoremediation: A Review, Colin Innes

University Honors Theses

Elemental and molecular contaminants of anthropogenic origin represent an increasing threat to virtually all terrestrial and aquatic environments as well as their surrounding atmosphere. The decontamination and restoration of these environments pose a significant and expensive challenge. Although chemical treatment or physical removal of contaminated substrates often is the most direct response to eliminate contaminants, due to the complexity and sensitivity of many natural systems, technologies involving biological remediation can provide viable alternatives. While plant, bacterial, and fungal organisms have the abilities to accumulate or to metabolize toxic compounds, fungal organisms are uniquely suited to do so. Their fast growth …

Proxies Of Design: A Case Study And Analysis Of Place And Commercial Real Estate In Seattle, Nicholas Miranda

University Honors Theses

What kinds of relationships exist between individual buildings and greater society in Seattle? Focusing on the role of design in shaping the value and desirability of commercial properties, the study examines and utilizes a large temporal and spatial dataset to test price analogs between common building attributes and metrics. By employing a hedonic pricing model, the study seeks to identify the impact of these attributes on property values and ultimately relate them to architectural and contextual design, from a micro to a macro level. The empirical findings are not necessarily novel or groundbreaking, but rather, they shed light on the …

The Impact Of Masculinity And Gender Norms On Men's Mental Health In The U.S.: A Literature Review, Isabella Slobojan

University Honors Theses

Research on the impact of masculinity and gender norms on men's mental health in the United States of America falls into 5 main categories: men and mental health resources, men and guns, men and suicide, men and domestic abuse, and men and sexual assault victimhood. All of the facets tie into the impact of hegemonic masculinity on men's mental health, and the consequences that come with it. Some of those consequences include the cyclical theme of violence among men and lack of emotional wellbeing. In the United States of America, masculine gender norms play a significant role in how our …

Business Analysis And Recommendations For Timber, Jared Alexander

University Honors Theses

To close out my PSU school of business experience, I've been placed on a team with five other classmates in the School of Business honors program cohort to help a business owner with some hurdles they are facing in their ventures. Throughout the last nine weeks, my teammates and I conducted a lot of research, and gave four presentations to the business owner. Our final presentation highlighted our final recommendations. The name of the business owner and company have been anonymized for confidentiality. All images featuring the name or logo of the company have been covered.

In this capstone review, …

Reclaiming Public Space: How Black Portlanders Transformed Irving Park, 1960s-1980s, Ana Bane

University Honors Theses

Although we often take their existence for granted, public parks are imperative for the vitality of a functioning democratic society. Parks are more than just sites for recreation–an important arena for community building in its own right; occupying public space is an inherently political act that takes on new dimensions in resistance movements. This project explores the role that public space played in the history of Black community organizing and resistance in Portland. Irving Park is a sixteen acre park in the heart of the Albina district, Portland’s historic African American neighborhood. Though the area is now heavily gentrified, from …

Let Kids Sleep: The Role Of Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Outreach In Stimulating Brains And Developing Research-Informed Approaches To Community Concerns, Marc Chenard

University Honors Theses

Northwest Noggin (NW Noggin), an all-volunteer neuroscience education outreach non-profit, serves its community by bringing students, artists, scientists and other participants together for artistic collaboration and learning. The outreach takes place in K-12 schools and other institutions (such as museums, coffee shops and correctional facilities) all over the Pacific Northwest. Neuroscience education outreach generates discourse surrounding community concerns through illuminating the brain-centric qualities of issues and by drawing on neuroscience research to create solutions. The neuroscience research-informed perspectives on these concerns stimulate awareness, create momentum towards evidence-based reform, and can result in policy interventions. This thesis details how NW Noggin …

It's A Mean, Mean World: Social Media And Mean World Syndrome, Samantha Kemp

University Honors Theses

Born from cultivation theory, which suggests that media has a profound effect on viewers' perceptions of the world around them, Mean World Syndrome is a psychosocial phenomenon that describes increased levels of fear, anxiety, and pessimism, as well as an overall perception of the world as "meaner" than it actually is, as a result of heavy viewership of violence-related mass media. Mean World Syndrome has primarily been associated with television consumption, but a major societal shift towards consumption of social media instead of television over the last two decades necessitates investigation into how social media affects its users. Through an …

Disrupting Epistemic Injustice: Implications For Lived-Experience Accounts Of Mental Illness In Social Work Education, Jessica D. Hawkins

University Honors Theses

Mental illness stigma interventions have not been shown to be effective on a large scale. It has been suggested by stigma researchers that being in close proximity to people with mental illness, or listening to their lived-experience narratives, could reduce mental illness stigma. This study proposes an inclusion of a Mad studies framework in social work education -- a framework that highlights the importance of lived-experience accounts of mental illness in knowledge production about this population. Inclusion of lived-experience narratives could reduce stigma and discrimination of people with mental illness among social workers and other service providers.

On Occupying: Women's Representation In The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Emma Hillstead

University Honors Theses

Scholars of peace and conflict studies have begun to investigate the impact the inclusion of women has on the success of peace talks that seek to resolve violent conflict. Many of these scholars have found that when women are included at the negotiating table, the likelihood for the conflict to come to a peaceful conclusion increases. With the historical, religious, and cultural nuances, this paper seeks to apply the existing research on this subject to that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This paper first analyzes the positionality of women within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically looking at access to power, then applies …

Resistance Training And Running Performance And Economy: A Literature Review, James Bottrill

University Honors Theses

Running performance is largely determined by maximal oxygen uptake (VO₂ max), velocity at VO₂ max, fractional utilisation of VO₂ max and running economy. Running economy is relatively under-researched and could be improved by resistance training because of its neuromuscular underpinnings. However, existing research on this topic is quite unorganised and inconclusive and is yet to prove a direct linkage between resistance training, running economy and performance. This literature review aimed to provide an organised overview of the existing literature, identify and address confounding variables and provide recommendations for future research. A search for studies was conducted via …

Microplastics Presence In Rhizophora Mangle Roots Throughout Fishponds And Open Coasts In Moloka'i, Hawaii, Mia Hackett

University Honors Theses

Microplastics (MP) are an emerging global contaminant that has drawn the attention of many researchers in the last few decades due to their growing environmental threats. Pieces of plastic smaller than 5 mm, they are specifically a high cause for concern in marine environments as their small size allows them to flow from inland into the ocean. Through this movement, MPs have been found in all marine ecosystems and ingested by hundreds of marine species often mistaking them for food. Labeled as one of the most threatened ecosystems, mangrove forests are already a large sink for a variety of contaminants …

The Objectives Of The Literary Translator: Translating A Science Fiction Nouvelle, Aishwarya Marathe

University Honors Theses

Language cannot be separated from its sociocultural context, given that it is a foundational tool with which humans communicate, understand, and connect with one another. This complicates the act of translating literary works from one language to another because the translator is translating more than words, she is transposing a cultural context into another. In addition, literary translators are faced with editorial expectations, the target language audience, and the demands of the source text itself, factors that are not always in agreement and can pose challenges during the translation process. In this paper, I present my original English translation of …

The Power Of (Virtual) Convergence: The Unrealized Potential Of Pair Programming And Remote Work, Mikayla Maki

University Honors Theses

Remote work is expensive. It can lead to isolation, miscommunications, and ossified organizations. These problems occur because of a synchronicity mismatch between how we need to communicate as humans, and what today's tools are capable of. This mismatch can be solved by the adoption of remote pair programming, as exemplified by the authors work at a startup (Zed). Pair programming provides the organic, synchronous, reciprocal interaction necessary to develop the sorts of relationships that remote firms currently lack.

Consumer 3d Printing For Remote Control Aircraft Wings: Development Of Novel Wingbox Structure, Ian Clark

University Honors Theses

Remote control aircraft construction and can be a very expensive and time-consuming hobby. With 3D printer consumer adoption rates skyrocketing, there is a gap between demand for RC aircraft and suitable well-designed models available to creators and hobbyists. By creating and testing two iterations of wingbox geometries, this research aims to help close that gap by producing an easily printable wing structure. While there are improvements that can be made on this work, this research has been effective in generating a novel wingbox structure for FFF 3D printing that has distinct advantages over other designs currently available.

Reconceptualizing The Interaction Between Adhd Symptoms And Environmental Context, Oliver G. Mcfadden

University Honors Theses

Difficult questions regarding etiology, prevalence, and individual treatment allude to the heterogenous and complex neurocognitive profile ADHD. Current understandings do not point to there being any yet-undiscovered, succinct set of features for the condition that will answer these questions. ADHD in fact has a heterogeneous etiology and neurocognitive profile, suffers from both overdiagnosis and underdiagnosis, and a variety of styles of treatment are conceivable to address this. Sociocultural factors have crucially guided the direction of ADHD pathology and medicalization and are woven into institutional environments. These extant problems have eluded ADHD research, and the debate over the construction and validity …

Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder: Symptomatology In Drug Induced Psychopathology, Eleanor Tietsort

University Honors Theses

Depersonalization/derealization disorder (DPDR) is a severely under-studied mental disorder, regardless of being relatively as prevalent as other serious mental illnesses (SMI) to the general population, such as schizophrenia and obsessive/compulsive disorder (OCD). Due to the nature of the current body of work on the disorder, it's clear there is a need for further research, as there are only a few small scale studies that approach the contradistinction in symptomatology between varying onset triggers. This paper proposes an investigation into whether there is a distinction in severity, duration, and persistence of symptoms between individuals with DPDR triggered by drugs versus non-drug …

Tattoos And Trauma: Are Tattoos Healing For Trauma?, Krystal Bell

University Honors Theses

Prior research and literature reviews suggest that there is medicinal value in tattooing for the healing of trauma. However, tattooing is still a burgeoning topic in academic studies and still mostly taboo as a western societal practice, so there are gaps in qualitative and quantitative data that could further validate the healing benefits of tattoos for trauma. This literature review analyzed 30 peer reviewed articles that focus on "contemporary tattoo data," "indigenous traditions and practices," "tattoos and trauma," and other alternative healing such as "MDMA, psilocybin, EMDR" to establish a well-rounded investigation into tattoos as an alternative healing option. The …

Social Media And Society: An Investigation Of How Female Athletes Use Instagram, Kathleen Amore

University Honors Theses

Athletes increasingly leverage social media so they can share experiences first-hand, sell products, and promote their personal ideas and skills. Female athletes can become empowered through Instagram's ability to give a 'voice' to the object through captions, as well as its' ability to generate revenue through endorsements. Female athletes who find the most success on Instagram often post content that highlights their sexuality and personal life over their sport. Their success is found through a form of 'self-objectification', which can be seen as empowering and/or regressive to women’s sports. To explore this tension, my research project focused on the intentions …

Medicalizing Homelessness: Narratives Of Individualization And Systemic Critique On Homeless Shelter Websites, Ella Mae Sowards

University Honors Theses

The medicalization of homelessness distracts from the systemic drivers of poverty and housing insecurity in favor of treating supposed psychological deviance within unhoused individuals. This article describes a mixed-methods content analysis of 35 Oregon homeless service organization websites investigating how the medicalization of homelessness is perpetuated in homeless service organizations' public-facing materials. Narratives that associate homelessness with mental illness and addiction and encourage self-reform among unhoused clients are identified as key drivers of the medicalization of homelessness on organization websites. Moreover, expressions of neoliberal ideology are found to coincide with medicalizing narratives, shedding further light on medicalization's ties to the …