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Tree-Equity And Environmental Justice Discourses Among Urban Forestry Professionals In Portland: Current Impacts And Future Implications, Axcelle Deone Bell

Dissertations and Theses

Urban tree equity is critical for addressing environmental justice and mitigating the effects of climate change in cities. This study investigates how professionals in Portland's urban forestry sector conceptualize and implement tree equity, focusing on equity and justice discourses. Through 27 semi-structured interviews with 29 professionals from government agencies and NGOs, I examine how these discourses shape decisions regarding tree planting, distribution, and maintenance, particularly in underserved communities. The analysis draws on political ecology, systems dynamics, and structuration theory to explore the systemic barriers perpetuating inequities in tree canopy distribution. The findings reveal tensions between different approaches to equity, such …

Cardiometabolic Multimorbidity And Dementia Onset Among Middle-Aged And Older Adults: Differences By Race/Ethnicity., Siting Chen, Ana R. Quiñones, Corey L. Nagel, Nicholas J. Bishop, Heather G. Allore, Jason T. Newsom, Jeffrey Kaye, Anda Botoseneanu

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Racial/ethnic minoritized groups in the U.S. have higher prevalence of cardiometabolic multimorbidity and experience higher risk of dementia. This study evaluates the relationship between cardiometabolic multimorbidity and dementia onset according to racial/ethnic group in a nationally representative cohort of U.S. middle-aged and older adults.

Turbulent Structures In Coupled Wind-Wave Flows, Cerrina Mouchref

Dissertations and Theses

The interactions between wind and waves in offshore environments are complex and have yet to be fully understood. Analyzing these interactions is motivated by an increased interest in climate modeling and the deployment of offshore construction, such as offshore wind farms. In this study, experiments are performed in a wind tunnel using particle image velocimetry (PIV) to analyze wind-wave interactions over various wave and wind speeds. The addition of the wave, a moving boundary, leads to the use of Reynolds triple decomposition in order to separate the turbulent and wave-phase coherent fluctuations. A curvilinear coordinate system was used to analyze …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet January 2025, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The January 6, 2025 monthly packet includes the agenda, appendices, and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held January 6, 2025.

“Lost-In-The-Later”: Framework For Quantifying Contextual Grounding In Large Language Models, Yufei Tao, Adam Hiatt, Rahul Seetharaman, Ameeta Agrawal

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Large language models (LLMs) are capable of leveraging both contextual and parametric knowledge but how they prioritize and integrate these sources remains underexplored. We introduce CoPE, a novel framework for systematically quantifying contextual grounding in LLMs. CoPE distinguishes between contextual knowledge (CK) and parametric knowledge (PK), enabling fine-grained attribution across languages and tasks. Using our newly created MultiWikiAtomic dataset in English, Spanish, and Danish, we analyze how LLMs integrate context, prioritize information, and incorporate PK in open-ended question answering. We find that across models and languages, only around 50 to 76 percent of outputs are grounded in the given context, …

Seedlings Of Pacific Northwest Plants: A Photographic Guide, Gabriel E. Campbell-Martinez, Roxy Olsson

Rae Selling Berry Seed Bank and Plant Conservation Program

This document presents a visual, non-technical field guide of native and exotic/invasive seedlings that grow wild in the Pacific Northwest. It contains over 550 taxa representing a broad range of families and ecosystems, focusing on species that occur in Oregon and Washington. Species were selected to reflect ecological importance, frequency of occurrence, and relevance to land management, restoration, and conservation. It is intended for a broad audience, including restoration practitioners, land managers, botanists, ecologists, students, naturalists, and others interested in identifying plants at early life stages.

Gatekeeping As An Online Adjunct Clinical Instructor In Counselor Education, Bernadet Dejonge, Deborah J. Rubel, Yun Shi

Counselor Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

This interpretative phenomenological analysis study examined how adjunct instructors teaching online clinical counseling courses experienced gatekeeping in the context of the university system. The research question was: How do online, adjunct instructors teaching master’s level clinical counseling courses experience their university interactions as a part of gatekeeping? The participants described five experiential themes. These were: a) Balancing marginalization in the system with advocacy for the profession; b) Maneuvering through dependency on the system in gatekeeping; c) Finding consultation while navigating gatekeeping interactions; d) Managing the intensity of clinical courses; and e) Navigating the steep learning curve of learning how to …

Forging Common Ground In Second Language Acquisition And Teaching: A Combined Synergy Statement, Marije Michel, Dwight Atkinson, Amable Custodio Ribeiro, Theodora Alexopoulou, Marco Cappellini, Søren Wind Eskildsen, Xuesong (Andy) Gao, John Hellermann, Hayriye Kayi‐Aydar, Steven L. Thorne, Multiple Additional Authors

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this final article in this guest‐edited issue on synergies in second language acquisition and teaching (SLA/T), we attempt to bring together the main content of this issue in an overall, combined synergy statement, concluding this project as a whole. Let us remind readers of the project: A shared effort by 17 scholars taking 11 different perspectives on SLA/T is not the norm in our field. Our aim has been to promote the intermingling and cross‐pollination of ideas, on the conviction that such efforts are needed to promote a field that is more than simply the sum of its parts, …

Bulletin: General Catalog Issue 2025-2026, Portland State University

Bulletin & Curriculum Change Documents

No abstract provided.

I Love That Country, That’S Why I Go There: Enduring Kiana Village Ties To Kobuk Valley National Park, Douglas Deur, Jamie Hebert, Emily Creek, Tricia Brown, Hannah Atkinson, Knowledge-Holders Of Kiana, Alaska, Christina Westlake

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

North of the Arctic Circle in far northwestern Alaska, Kobuk Valley National Park is a remote, roadless protected area transected by the Kobuk River—one of the northernmost salmon-bearing rivers in North America. Characterized by tundra, taiga, and the dramatic 25-square-mile Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, the park serves as a critical pathway for nearly half a million migrating caribou. Significant archaeological sites have been documented along the Kobuk River, demonstrating thousands of years of human settlement, fishing, caribou hunting, and many other cultural activities. At the time of European contact, and into the early 20th century, there were still Iñupiaq “Eskimo” …

Welcoming Historically Under-Represented Groups In Higher Education Through Awareness Of Standard English Ideology, John Hellermann, Lynn Santelmann, Jennifer Mittelstaedt, Janet Cowal, Steven L. Thorne

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the context of changing demographics at regional universities (including our own), we highlight an ongoing project at our university that addresses the last area of acceptable bias in English-medium higher education: bias against speakers of other languages and non-standard dialects of English. We discuss the hegemonic aspect of the Standard Academic English used by default at most US institutions of higher education and its role in potential discrimination against users of languages other than English and dialects other than the Standard. Data from over 2000 surveys, 55 follow up interviews, and three focus groups from faculty, staff and students …

Trees, Schools, & Stakeholders: Building Partnerships For Schoolyard Greening With Portland Urban Forestry Learning Landscapes, Claire Brase

Environmental Science and Management Professional Master's Project Reports

Portland Urban Forestry Learning Landscapes is a city program offering free tree planting and establishment services to schools, community groups, and multi-residential zones in the city of Portland, Oregon. This project report, completed on behalf of Learning Landscapes, uses qualitative evidence from interviews with school district administrators, teachers, volunteers, grounds staff, city employees, and outreach experts to gain a deeper understanding of the factors leading to successful collaboration between local school districts and their external community partners. These conversations with school and outreach personnel across the city suggest that district staff are interested in collaborative greening organizations like Learning Landscapes …

"Where Will My Family Go?" The Financial, Housing, And Health Challenges Of Families Facing Eviction, Natalie J. Cholula, Alex Farrington, Lisa K. Bates, Marisa A. Zapata, Jacen Greene

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

To better understand how eviction affects families with children, the Evicted in Oregon team conducted focus groups with 74 tenants from Baker, Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Multnomah, and Washington counties in Oregon. During focus group discussions, we asked participants whether they had children in the household at the time of eviction and how it impacted them. Parents reported that their children’s well-being was their main concern during the eviction process. They also described how eviction led to disruptions in their children’s education, health and medical treatments, and living arrangements. Based on our findings, we provide a set of policy and program …

A Profile Of Freshman Inquiry Students Fall 2025, Rowanna L. Carpenter

University Studies Assessment Research

In order to better understand the students enrolled in Freshman Inquiry (FRINQ) courses and identify areas where they may need support, University Studies (UNST) began collecting and compiling data on these students. This report presents a profile of FRINQ students from Fall 2025. It presents an overview of all students enrolled in FRINQ during Fall 2025 and then summarizes information from the Prior Learning Survey.

Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (Ppgis) And Understanding User Conflict On The Rogue River, Kim Gaines-Munkvold

Masters in GIS Practicum Reports

This practicum explored the application of Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) to better understand user conflict on the Upper Rogue River, particularly tensions surrounding the use of jetboats. Partnered with Oregon’s Kitchen Table (OKT), who specialize in public engagement within the Hatfield School of Governance at Portland State University, the project supported Oregon state agencies’ effort to gather community input. The practicum consisted of two components - field work and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis. Field work involved traveling to southern Oregon to work as a part of OKT public engagement team at community events and conversations, using a …

Writing Back To Empire: Anticolonial Petitioning And Decolonisation In Postwar British West Africa, 1945–1960, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article reexamines petition writing as a strategic form of anticolonial resistance and negotiation in British West Africa between 1945 and 1960. Focusing on Nigeria and the Gold Coast (now Ghana), it argues that petitions – often regarded as apolitical or ineffective – were in fact deeply political texts through which colonised individuals asserted rights, challenged imperial authority, and participated in shaping decolonisation discourse. Drawing on new archival petitions, colonial correspondence, and administrative records, the study analyzes how a wide range of African actors – including trade unions, veterans, women’s organisations, and youth groups – appropriated colonial bureaucratic norms to …

Nuance As Praxis For Teaching About Mandated Reporting: Classroom Activities, Grace Pappas, Sam Harrell, Stéphanie Wahab

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

As social work instructors, we have observed students increasingly wanting to engage in critical conversations about mandated reporting. Few resources are available to support instructors in facilitating these conversations. This teaching note offers content and lesson plans for exploring mandated reporting as a moral duty, a harm, an ethical dilemma, and a legal mandate in the classroom. Together, these pedagogical tools can help instructors embrace nuance as a practice for teaching about mandated reporting.

Sound, Touch, And Place: An Exploratory Study Of The Potential For Emotive Cognitive Mapping Through The Use Of Audio Description And Tactile Objects At A National Memorial, Amy Parker, Haruka Hopper, Kira Swearingen, Leah Neumann Samson, Brett Oppegaard, Hazelle Magaoay-Baniaga, Mary-Clare Cable

Leadership, Learning and Counseling Faculty Publications and Presentations

Audio description, tactile objects, and memorial sites are often studied separately for their communicative and emotive potential without consideration of potential multimodal connections existing among people, technologies, and solemn public places. This study’s novel mixed-methods approach uses site tours, surveys, think-aloud protocol, semi-structured interviews, and observations to develop rich and holistic understandings of such complex multimodal site visits at Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Hawai‘i by people who are DeafBlind, blind, or with low vision. Several themes emerged in the grounded empirical data gathered during the tour, afterward, and during an interview one month later, including findings that bridged emotions, …

Historicity And Axiology: Temporal Implications For Axiology, Bennett Gilbert

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

To develop the axiology of moral (or ethical) values, phenomenological analysis must look at temporality in a way that is unfamiliar to it. This way is through knowledge and experience of the actual historical past, from which it has been separated by the Heideggerian conception of historicity and its classical Husserlian analysis of time consciousness. The development of historical studies helps to make this possible. A simple sample model of the diachronesis of the awareness of ethical significance, value, and obligation is presented. It moves the analysis from a presentist focus to the field of experience in which subjects develop …

Improving Student Support On A Decentralized Campus, Delaney Ybarra, Andrea Garrity, Erica L. Wagner

Office of Academic Affairs Publications

Project management has been a key tool in many industries, such as technology and construction, yet it remains underutilized in the higher education sector. In 2013, Portland State University’s Office of Student Success adopted a project management framework to improve student outcomes. This article describes how in using project management we developed a pilot program that helped administer hardship funds to students, what the outcomes were, and how it advanced the project across a decentralized landscape.

Effects Of The Upwind Spanwise Heterogeneous Terrain On The Wind Resource Distribution, Haosen H.A. Xu, Tianxiang Yu, Raúl Bayoán Cal, Xiaowei Zhu

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wind energy has become increasingly crucial among renewable energy resources, and as the prerequisite for effective wind energy utilization, accurate wind resource assessments are hence prominent. Topography significantly affects near-surface wind fields and is thus an essential factor to be considered for wind resource assessment. However, few studies have addressed the wind resource distribution downwind of spanwise-heterogeneous terrains, which are frequently encountered in both natural and urban environments. To fill this gap, large eddy simulations were performed to investigate wind distributions over a uniform terrain downwind of terrains featuring spanwise-alternating strips of low and high surface roughness, and the high …

Leaden Circles, Eternal Springs, And Rusty Pumps: Time, Nature, And Industry In Mrs. Dalloway, Katherine Evans

Anthós

This article explores often-overlooked ecocritical aspects in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, analyzing Woolf’s literary intersection of time, nature, and industry as a precursor to contemporary Anthropocene discourse. Acknowledging prevailing interpretations of Mrs. Dalloway through social lenses of trauma, class, and gender, Evans reveals how Woolf’s exploration of human-environment relationships is not only present but integral to interpreting the text fully. Drawing from textual close readings, scholarship on Woolf, and environmental humanities frameworks, Evans demonstrates how Woolf utilizes the Big Ben and a beggar woman to symbolize human-nature relationships. Evans’ ecocritical reading of Mrs. Dalloway repositions the 1925 novel within contemporary …

A Proposed Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé Game Model For Natural Language Processing Generative Adversarial Networks, Don Li

Anthós

Large Language Models (LLM’s) (e.g., ChatGPT) constitute both a significant research area and commercial application of AI. Current major LLM’s are built on Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) neural network architecture to perform natural language processing (NLP) tasks. Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is another popular neural network architecture, which leverages a zero-sum game between constituent neural networks within the architecture to train the GAN, and is widely used for visual data applications. This article proposes a new GAN architecture for NLP: an EF-GAN whose underlying algorithm uses Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé (EF) games, a game-theoretic approach from model theory to determine elementary equivalence of …

Analyzing Rap Through Poetry: “Zen Scientist” By Milo & Kenny Segal, Mason S. Jensen

Anthós

milo, now known as R.A.P. Ferraria, has described his music as synonymous with poetry. This article examines his song “zen scientist,” testing the linkage of poetry and rap through poetic analysis. Jensen analyzes the song through metrical systems, marking it in scansion, poetic feet, and rhyme to delineate rhythm and to show how rhythm is created and experimented with. Jensen then applies Vendler and Chan’s methods for deriving poetic meaning, providing potential interpretations of “zen scientist.” Jensen argues these poetic methods dissect the rap song into perspicuity. The article concludes that poetic analysis can be used effectively to analyze rap …

Proper Conjugation Of Bodies: Chastity, Age, And Care Work In Sri Lankan Migrants’ Families, Michele Ruth Gamburd

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Physical and symbolic aspects of bodies limit the migration trajectories of female domestic workers from a Buddhist community in coastal Sri Lanka. Government regulations and family decisions regarding women’s overseas labour draw upon and in turn influence discourses about gender, sexuality, age, health, and class. This ethnographic analysis illustrates that local norms task women with nurturing the brains of babies, preserving the chastity of teenage daughters, caring for frail elders, and preventing their working-class husbands from overindulging in liquor or having sex with other women. Successful social reproduction depends on the proper conjunctions of bodies in the extended family. Corporeal …

Fueling Adaptation: Collaborative Wildfire Governance In The Colorado Front Range Landscape, Mahmood Muttaqee, Cody Evers, Lindsay K. Campbell, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Olivia Awbrey, Kathryn Hixson, Michelle Johnson, Erika Svendsen

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Collaborative governance plays a critical role in wildfire risk mitigation efforts. This study examines collaborative wildfire governance networks within the Colorado Front Range, a landscape that was designated under the USDA Forest Service's Wildfire Crisis Strategy (WCS). Collaborative governance networks in the Colorado Front Range leverage partnerships across multiple organizational actors including federal, state, and local agencies, non-profits, fire districts, and research institutions. Through survey data collected from 281 respondents revealing a collaborative network of 401 organizations, the study aimed to identify the structure, capacity, and gaps in governance networks addressing wildfire risk in the Colorado Front Range. Survey results …

The Fascist Economic Paradox: Countering And Co-Opting Capitalism And Socialism In Interwar Europe, Vicente Pérez Catalán

History Undergraduate Departmental Honors Theses

One of the ambiguities within the study of fascism and political history in the 20th century is defining, in logical terms, the development of a coherent fascist economic identity. Three fascist governments will be examined in this project, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Vichy France, with the goal of understanding if there is indeed a distinction on their exertion of economic power as opposed to other ideological systems that could aid outlining fascism not merely as a political or philosophical doctrine, but perhaps also an economic one.

This study examines the political background prior to the formation of the three …

Disability In Exile: The "Union Of Russian Invalids" In Interwar Bulgaria And Yugoslavia, Evguenia Davidova

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the post-war experience of a specific group of war veterans: the Russian refugees after the October Revolution in 1917. What happened when disabled veterans were stateless and dispersed among several foreign states? The focus is on comparing interwar Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, two countries on opposite sides of the Great War. There the refugees established various societies, mostly dominated by the military. Drawing on unpublished archival sources, this article investigates how the Russian societies for disabled persons functioned at four levels: amid the other Russian associations in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia; among the greater diaspora known as “Russia Abroad”; …

Map Marker Accuracy: Evaluating Spatial Data Quality In A Simplified Mapping Survey, Christopher Sean Ghormley

Masters in GIS Practicum Reports

Collecting spatial information using maps is a recurring need in research and policy (Evers, 2020; Gottwald et al., 2016; Hitchins, 2018; Tang & Liu, 2016). Survey participants frequently abandon map-based surveys at the first mapping task (Poplin, 2015). In his survey of wildfire risk management personnel, Evers (2020) applied a simplified web-mapping interface that uses circles as the sole input geometry for all spatial representations. The current project examines an updated version of this web map. An anonymous survey gathered data from participants who completed six mapping exercises within Portland, Oregon, and provided feedback on the survey experience. A working …

Does Coil Build Social Capital? Trust, Tolerance, And Political Engagement Among Students In The Usa And Uae, Lindsay J. Benstead, Kristina Katsos, Sally S. Mudiamu, Corinne Hughes

Politics and Global Affairs Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite technological innovation and the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a dearth of experimental research on the effects of virtual instruction. Using an original field experiment conducted among 100 UAE and USA students, we investigate how a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project on international development shapes social trust, tolerance, and political engagement. In an experimental design, UAE-based students were randomly assigned to a group with either their classmates or, through online interaction, with USA-based students, while in a quasi-experimental design, USA-based students collaborated online with UAE-based students. UAE-based COIL students developed greater interpersonal trust of others in their society, but …