Digital Commons Network^™

Testing Potential Correlations Between Childhood Lead Exposure And Authoritarianism In Adulthood, Kragen Anderson

University Honors Theses

A significant body of research links lead exposure during childhood to negative effects ranging from increased impulsivity to societal level effects such as an increased likelihood of committing violent crime in adulthood. Due to exposure vectors such as lead water pipes, lead solder, lead based paints, and leaded gasoline there was significant lead exposure during childhood for large portions of the American population. This paper tested and found a statistically significant association between average population level lead exposure in childhood and likelihood of voting for candidate Trump later in life.

Healthcare Access Challenges Among Asian Americans, Phyo Theingi

University Honors Theses

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial ethnic group in the U.S. According to the 2023 U.S. Census Bureau population estimate, Asian Americans account for 25.2 million (or 7.4%) of the nation's population. Asian Americans are not a monolith and represent a diversity of rich histories, cultures, languages and ethnicities. According to research conducted by the Pew Research Center, most Asian Americans face discrimination of some kind, including being treated as a foreigner in the U.S and being stereotyped as a model minority. They also experience health care access barriers. Research found that Asian Americans face barriers related to language …

Singing As Liberation: Spiritual Imagination And An Embodied Practice Of Hope Through Spirituals And Songs Of The Uhadi, Matisse Geselle

University Honors Theses

An exploration of the spirituality and the sacredness of music—and especially singing—through recording my own interpretations of spirituals and songs of the uHadi. It is also a poetic inquiry into how imagery of the river is used in spirituals as a pathway to freedom and liberation, and how the singing of spirituals is hope embodied. And it is a reflection of how my experience of the uHadi and my friends of the Ibuyambo ensemble changed me. The process of working on this project also feels like I am connecting to myself—and others—more deeply through singing. And ultimately, I hope for …

Navigating Filipino-American Identity Through Philippine Foodways, Jenelle Kirsten De Leon

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines the complexity of Filipino-American identity and investigates how Philippine foodways can function as a meaningful pathway for cultural understanding, identity formation, and intergenerational connection. Shaped by colonization, cultural hybridity, generational divides, and limited representation in Western education and media, Filipino-American identity is often difficult to define and navigate, leaving many individuals without accessible entry points to explore their culture, history, traditions, and more.

Through an analysis of existing literature, primary research, and a survey of Filipino-American youth, this study finds that Filipino cuisine operates as a powerful site of cultural and historical knowledge. The narratives embedded within …

Characteristics Of Social Capital In Informal Housing Settlements, Lena Parsons

University Honors Theses

Many cities see growth of informal housing settlements as urban populations rise across the globe. Residents of informal settlements are observed to use robust networks of social capital to support themselves in an environment of resource scarcity and marginalization. This review synthesizes research examining characteristics of social capital in informal housing settlements, finding that (1) social capital influences residents' acquisition of basic needs, (2) the structure of social capital networks depend on the context of the settlement, and (3) the built environment of informal settlements has a cyclical relationship to their social capital networks. This synthesis concludes that formal solutions …

The Good Knight, Elektra Koozer

University Honors Theses

The Good Knight is a comics adaptation of Sir Galahad's story through the lens of a queer retelling. This story focuses on queer relationships, struggling with depression and isolation, and death. It begins at the end of Galahad's life, where he is forced to question his legacy and who he is after completing the quest that has dictated his whole life. The story weaves through time, reflecting upon his past, thinking about his mother's expectations of him, being chosen for the grail quest, confronting his estranged father, and trying to cope with the world on his shoulders. He has to …

"What About Me?": Explaining Voting Patterns Among Young Men In The 2024 Election, Camille Moore

University Honors Theses

This study analyzes the recent rightward shift in voting patterns among Gen Z men in the 2024 election cycle and beyond. Drawing on procedural justice theory, it argues that deterrence from the Democratic party, rather than appeals from the opposition, was the primary driver of the shift, and that this deterrence reflects perceptions of procedural unfairness and exclusion from Democratic party agendas and policymaking platforms. A qualitative empirical analysis, including interviews with a politically and demographically diverse sample of men aged 21-26 in Oregon, supports this argument. Participants felt unjustly excluded from the left based largely on identity-related concerns and …

Uniform Stability Of Katyusha In Strongly-Convex Settings, Don Li

University Honors Theses

Acceleration of convergence and reduction of variance constitute a trade-off in the design of stochastic optimization machine learning algorithms. Katyusha was introduced to address this trade-off, synthesizing Nesterov Accelerated Gradient (NAG) and Stochastic Variance-Reduced Gradient (SVRG) into a single first-order optimizer with promising empirical performance. However, the generalization properties of Katyusha remain largely unexplored. We conjecture that, in the smooth quadratic regime (i.e., under assumptions of strong convexity and smoothness of the loss function, and boundedness of gradients), Katyusha is uniformly stable in the sense of Bousquet and Elisseeff. Instantiating our framework for NAG, we extend the use of Lyapunov …

Seeing A Future Where I Exist As Myself: An Exploration Of Suicidality As A Response To Sociopolitical Oppression In Transgender And Gender Expansive Populations, Alexander Ray Sequoia

University Honors Theses

Suicide is often considered a mental health issue alone. For Transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) people, suicide can be a response to erasure of self and living under oppression conditions. The sociopolitical climate in the United States (U.S.), has become more hostile for TGNC people, along with legislative action that criminalizes their existence. This project explores the intersections of identity and nuances of suicide and death. The present study consists of 14 semi-structured interviews. This study examined the intersections of gender and culture on suicide responses, highlighting the importance of culturally relevant and community-led support for Transgender and gender expansive …

Understanding Moral Injury In Emergency Department Clinicians: Predictors, Outcomes, And Evidence Gaps, Rose Doering Lightspeed

University Honors Theses

Moral injury (MI) is an emerging construct for understanding clinician distress in high-acuity healthcare settings, yet its application to Emergency Department (ED) clinicians remains limited. MI refers to psychological distress resulting from exposure to, or participation in, situations that conflict with deeply held moral or ethical standards, often due to systemic or organizational constraints. Although prior research has examined MI in heterogeneous healthcare samples, the ED remains underexamined despite its unique combination of high patient acuity, throughput pressure, and resource limitations.

This review synthesizes literature on MI among healthcare workers with a focus on ED clinicians, drawing on Industrial-Organizational psychology …

The Gut Microbiome, The Gut-Brain Axis, And College Student Well-Being, Idi Mckay

University Honors Theses

This literature review examines how diet, stress, environmental exposure, and food accessibility may influence college students' mental health and academic performance through the gut microbiome and the Gut-Brain Axis (GBA). Current microbiome research often focuses on early childhood development, clinical disease populations, or older adults, while overlooking college-age students who experience significant social, environmental, and biological transitions. College students frequently face food insecurity, irregular eating patterns, chronic stress, inconsistent sleep schedules, and reduced access to nutrient-dense foods, all of which may influence microbial diversity and overall gut health.

This thesis explores how modern campus environments and lifestyle factors may contribute …

The Commons Of The Mind: Modeling Repeat-Player Behavior In Intellectual Property Infringement Disputes, Eliot Bridges Warner

University Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the applicability of Marc Galanter's 1974 model of repeat-player (RP) and one-shotter (OS) civil litigation to the domain of intellectual property (IP) infringement disputes. While Galanter's framework predicts that repeat players will enjoy structural advantages over one-shotters, this paper argues that IP deviates from that model in consequential ways. Unique features of IP infringement litigation, including the duty to enforce, the risk of invalidation at trial, the inverse relationship between firm size and infringement stakes, and compounding advantages accruing to large firms, produce a hierarchy of strategic advantage that is more steeply resource-dependent than Galanter anticipates.

Drawing …

Adopting Critical Power Grid Infrastructure Technologies: An Organizational Cybersecurity Assessment Against Ransomware, Fayez Alsoubaie

Dissertations and Theses

For many years, researchers and practitioners have studied emerging technologies in field of energy production and distribution. Power grid systems carry major weights in the energy branch of the economy. Researchers and scientists have been interested in finding ways to connect the power grid gap and improve protection for its technologies.

The research supports organizational adoption and prioritization of critical cybersecurity technologies for ransomware protection in power grid infrastructure. As utilities increasingly integrate digital technologies, they become more vulnerable to sophisticated cyberattacks that can disrupt services and put public safety at risk. The main focus of the study is to …

Positive Partner Support And Veteran Well-Being: How Capitalization Support Strengthens Military Veterans And Partnerships, Maryann Dona Samson

Dissertations and Theses

Among military veterans, the transition to civilian life is often marked by elevated distress and burnout, low job satisfaction, and a lack of perceived psychological safety. Social support, especially from intimate partners, can serve as a critical protective factor. While most support literature focuses on stress-buffering in adverse contexts, positive social support, such as responsiveness to shared positive experiences (i.e., capitalization support), is a powerful though understudied process. This dissertation investigates the role of partner capitalization support, which is the responsiveness shown by a romantic partner when one shares good news, as a source of stress reduction, resilience, and relational …

Why Am I Here? Individual, Organizational, & Societal Influences Of Employee Motives To Attend Voluntary Diversity Training And Their Effects On Training Outcomes, Henri T. Maindidze

Dissertations and Theses

Diversity training is a key part of diversity management efforts, but its effectiveness has repeatedly been called into question in both academic and applied spaces, leading many to question its utility. In the case of voluntary diversity training (VDT), where employees can opt in or out of participation, those motivated to attend might not be the ones who would most benefit from participating, thereby limiting the effectiveness of VDT for the organization. As a result, understanding the predictors and outcomes of employee motives to attend VDT can guide improved implementation and evaluation of VDT. Informed by self-determination theory and training …

Assessment Of The Readiness Of Architectural Design Companies To Adopt Eco-Friendly Nanotechnologies In Sustainable Building Design, Ashwaq Essa Al Khalil

Dissertations and Theses

Nanotechnology is emerging as a promising innovation in sustainable architectural design, although its adoption remains slow. Research highlights the advantages of incorporating nanotechnologies in architecture, including improved material performance, enhanced thermal efficiency, reduced energy consumption, improved durability, and progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These advantages make nanomaterials a promising solution for sustainable building design, particularly in hot-climate regions where energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with conventional building design practices remain major concerns.

Despite this potential, nanotechnology adoption in architecture faces several challenges, including limited real-world applications, slow diffusion in practice, and persistent organizational, economic, and regulatory barriers. …

Digital (In)Justice? Evaluating Procedural Justice In Online Crime Reporting, Nazmy Natia

Dissertations and Theses

Online Crime Reporting portals (OCR) have become a routine entry point for non-emergency police services, fundamentally redefining how the public initiates contact with law enforcement. Although these portals are presented as efficient and accessible, little attention has been paid to whether their design and communication serve the people who use them. Prior research on procedural justice (PJ) has largely examined face-to-face police encounters, while latest studies of OCR systems emphasize victim experience and usability. However, the existing literature offers limited guidance on how PJ principles translate from in-person encounters to digital reporting platforms. This prompted the current study, drawing on …

The Method Of Periodic Averaging Applied To Reduced Coupled Mode Theory Models For Fiber Laser Amplifiers, Rebecca Nicole Bryant

Dissertations and Theses

Fiber laser amplifier (FLA) models are often implemented without rigorous mathematical justification or thorough numerical validation. Without a proper theoretical basis for assumptions and approximations, or a technical analysis of model performance, there is significant uncertainty about the limitations of any given reduced model and its suitability for an application. This research aims to address the lack of comprehensive assessment of FLA models by directly comparing distinct models and recommending a mathematical alternative to replace heuristic model-reduction techniques. The work in this dissertation is divided into two projects: a comparative study that uses existing FLA models to assess the validity …

Aid And Assist Cases In Multnomah County: An Exploration Of Ors 161.370, Savannah Jurasek

Dissertations and Theses

Individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) are highly overrepresented in jails. In Oregon, these individuals can be eligible for what is referred to as the aid and assist process (ORS 161.370) which is designed to facilitate restorative care in efforts to ensure that vulnerable individuals can rationally participate in their criminal proceedings. However, continuous escalation in aid and assist orders (109.3% between 2011-2025) has led to strain on the Oregon State Hospital, the primary care facility for this population. As a consequence, defendants with SMI are spending unnecessary time in custody, despite hospitalization admission guidelines governed by previously decided case …

Shifting Perspectives In Mathematics: Examining Preservice Elementary Teachers' Evolving Conceptions Of Mathematics, Identity, And Social Inequality Through Course Design, Autumn Thu Pham

Dissertations and Theses

Mathematics is often viewed, taught, and learned as an abstract, stand-alone subject, with an emphasis on procedures that are frequently disconnected from learners' lived experiences. Within this framing, limited attention is given to students' affect and identities in relation to mathematics. As a result, opportunities to engage with mathematics as a social, sociopolitical, and empowering tool remain rare. These patterns highlight an important implication for teacher education programs: when mathematics is framed primarily as abstract and procedural, preservice elementary teachers (PTs) may enter the profession lacking strong conceptual understanding, pedagogical flexibility, and the social and political awareness needed to effectively …

Expanding Transmobilities: Understanding Genderdiverse And Transgender Travel Behavior Through An Art-Informed Methodology, Nicholas Michael Puczkowskyj

Dissertations and Theses

Transgender and genderdiverse people face discrimination and harassment in public when making trips in Portland, OR. People who identify as genderdiverse or transgender create unique travel behavior due to the influence of their internalized and expressed gender identity and through interactions in public. This dissertation examines how gender identity influences the travel behavior of genderdiverse and transgender people and how these experiences influence their subjective wellbeing when making trips in Portland, Oregon. Traditional one-on-one interviews were conducted in conjunction with allowing the interviewees to produce art as a non-verbal form of expression and communication of their experiences making trips in …

Acceptance Of Shared Autonomous Vehicles: Exploring The Attitudes And Perspectives Of Older Adults, Sara Sohaee Urbina

Dissertations and Theses

The fast development of autonomous vehicle systems will create major changes in how people move around. Previous research shows that these technologies can benefit older people who struggle with mobility, safety and access to transportation. Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAVs) enable older people to achieve self-reliance while obtaining essential services which enhance their quality of living. The successful deployment of SAVs requires users to accept this new technology which they must also be willing to use. This research study investigates which elements affect older adults to adopt SAVs by using an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) framework.

The research design of …

Foundations' Deep, Emily Williams, Morgan Williams

University Honors Theses

Most historic buildings do not survive as they were built, yet preservation frameworks still tend to evaluate them as if they did.

Foundations' Deep begins with a structure located in Helena, Montana 59602, a building that sits uneasily within the categories it has been asked to meet. Built in the early twentieth century, it has persisted through alteration, abandonment, and use. What remains is not a stable artifact but a record of accumulated decisions, some careful and many indifferent, now embedded in the fabric of the building itself.

The thesis grows from this condition and from the limits of the …

Profiles Of Family Engagement In Head Start, Elizabeth Jane Tremaine

Dissertations and Theses

Families of young children are active participants in their child's transition to kindergarten. Head Start is designed to facilitate families' engagement in their child's learning experiences (Head Start Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework, 2018). This study explores family engagement in Head Start, its changes across the transition into kindergarten, and its relation to children's development of social-emotional and executive function skills.

The current study addresses limitations of previous research by relying on family perspectives of family engagement, approaching family engagement as a developmental concept, and taking a person-centered analytic approach that accounts for the multi-dimensionality of family engagement. This …

Group Operations For Concurrent Binary Search Trees, Theodora R. Cooper

Dissertations and Theses

A group operation performs multiple independent instances of the same operation on a data structure. For example, a group operation might look up 10 different keys in a binary search tree, returning 10 results. Chen et al introduced group prefetching, an optimization for group operations on linked data structures that improves throughput by overlapping memory access latencies for independent traversals. Constructing code that maximizes this throughput benefit by fully leveraging the instruction- and memory-level parallelism available on modern hardware is challenging because of overhead, interactions with the cache hierarchy, and other factors.

To address these challenges, we present two new …

Entre La Lucha: Familismo And Well-Being Of Latino Immigrant Families Navigating Manual Labor And Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, Faviola Robles Saenz

Dissertations and Theses

The United States' history of treatment toward Latino immigrants has been shaped by anti-immigrant sentiment and exploitative labor practices, creating psychological violence that harms their families' well-being. Although previous research has examined anti-immigrant sentiment, labor conditions, and familismo among Latinos, these areas are often studied in isolation, with limited attention to their intersections and how they are experienced across generations. Informed by history, prior research, and my lived experiences, this study qualitatively explored the intersections of anti-immigrant sentiment and parents' manual labor to understand how these contexts shape familismo and well-being among Latino immigrant families. This work was grounded in …

Ambivalence, Foremourning, And Displacement In The German Translation Of Marie Bonaparte's Topsy, Kooper Wilson

University Honors Theses

This paper offers a reading of Sigmund Freud’s German translation of Marie Bonaparte’s book, Topsy: The Golden-Haired Chow, in which the author attempts to both delay the death of her dog and mourn it in advance through what I call foremourning. I argue that the manifest subject matter of Topsy should not be interpreted away as a projection of merely human concerns, but rather that close attention to Freud’s translation introduces themes from his analytic experience which engender an appreciation of Topsy’s atopia (intractability). I draw from recent psychoanalytic theory, literary criticism, and deconstruction, especially Jacques Derrida’s seminars …

Emotion-Focused Teaching And Preschool Children's Social, Emotional, And Self-Regulatory Development, Brielle Emily Petit

Dissertations and Theses

Contributing to the literature on supportive mechanisms for children's development of social, emotional, and self-regulatory competencies, the current study examines the contributions of emotion-focused teaching in preschool classrooms. Emotion-focused teaching is a framework used within preschool classrooms that encompasses three domains of teaching that support children's development of emotion skills—how teachers display their own emotions or emotion-related behaviors and actions (modeling), the ways they respond to children's emotional expressions (responding), and how instruction is used to inform children about emotions and related processes (instructing). More frequent emotion-focused teaching has been shown to be a …

Getting Close, Sadie Laufe Mccarthy

Dissertations and Theses

"Getting Close" is a collection of short pieces, some fiction and some memoir. It's not important which is which.

I'm interested in the barriers we face when it comes to connection, and how aloneness can often be more sensual than togetherness. I'm interested in the places we find respite from the pain of existing within societal pressures.

I'm not interested in acceptability. I write toward a world in which we do not have to be anything other than ourselves.

Growing Pains: The Loss Of Plasticity To Extreme Anoxia In Developing Embryos Of Austrofundulus Limnaeus, Patrick Ryan Clouser

Dissertations and Theses

Oxygen plays a pivotal role for most animal life on Earth, so much so that even short exposures to no oxygen, anoxia, can have severe effects on the animal's wellbeing. Conversely, aerobic recovery after anoxic insult can be just as detrimental. Some animals are the exception to this rule and demonstrate survival through anoxia and recovery. There has been a great deal of research around anoxia tolerant animals, but what remains unclear are the genetic underpinnings that determine the anoxia tolerant phenotype. RNA sequencing allows for the quantification of RNA transcripts within a sample, which can indicate if a gene …