Digital Commons Network^™

The Two-Generation Classroom: Learning Together In The Gen Ed Core, Autumn Green

National Student Parent Success Symposium: Lifting Generations Together

This workshop presents a new approach to post-secondary pedagogy referred to as, The Two Generation Classroom. The Two-Generation Classroom offers curricula for the general education core that facilitate parent/child inter-generational learning. Using hybrid online/in-person strategies, and a learning-buddy approach to integrated arts teaching/learning activities, the Two-Generation Classroom approach aims to address and reduce inequity in college access and success for student parents, while ensuring academic excellence and rigor.

Dr. Autumn R. Green is Founding Director of the National Center for Student Parent Programs, and is currently transitioning from Endicott College to join Wellesley Centers for Women as a Visiting Scholar …

Development Of A Direct Aqueous Synthetic Route For The Production Of Elemental Bismuth Nanoparticles, Colin Jon Hiatt

Dissertations and Theses

Bismuth nanoparticles (Bi NPs) for use as an X-ray contrast material have gained significant traction in recent years due to the high atomic number and generally accepted biological tolerance of bismuth. However, to be considered a viable candidate for use in this application, water solubility is a necessity, which poses a challenge, since bismuth tends to readily oxidize. For this reason, research into the direct aqueous synthesis of Bi NPs is still in its infancy and can be very difficult, as described in Chapter 1. The remaining chapters of the thesis describe the direct aqueous synthesis of Bi NPs starting …

Criteria For Active Euthanasia And Physician-Assisted Suicide, Christina Kavehrad

University Honors Theses

Internationally, there are varying laws regarding physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and active euthanasia. In the United States, PAS is legal in Right to Die states like Oregon. These states necessitate that patients seeking PAS be terminally ill, often with 6 months or less left to live. There are also countries that allow for active euthanasia, with the majority of these countries also requiring that the patient be terminally ill. Belgium and the Netherlands are two countries that do not necessitate terminal illness in their criteria, but instead utilize the category of unbearable or constant suffering, which has, controversially, led to the …

Campus Sexual Assault And (In)Justice: An Inquiry Into Campus Grievance Professionals' Roles, Responsibilities, And Perspectives Of Justice, Liane Kehaulani O'Banion

Dissertations and Theses

Approximately one in four women experience sexual violence in college. Public institutions of higher education identify professionals specifically responsible for Title IX compliance, campus grievance processes, and survivor advocacy. Success in these roles depends upon a variety of institutional, legal, and procedural factors, and the ability to balance compliance, accountability, transparency, confidentiality, and care for students in pursuit of institutional justice. However, the literature has failed to acknowledge the complexities and individual cost of serving in these contentious roles. Moreover, facets of organizational culture can hinder grievance professionals' efficacy in fulfilling their duties, facilitating consistent and fair resolutions, and ensuring …

"On The Murder Of Rickey Johnson": The Portland Police Bureau, Deadly Force, And The Struggle For Civil Rights In Oregon, 1940 - 1975, Katherine Eileen Nelson

Dissertations and Theses

On March 14, 1975, twenty-eight year old Portland Police Officer Kenneth Sanford shot and killed seventeen-year-old Rickie Charles Johnson in the back of the head during a sting operation. Incredulously, Johnson was the fourth person of color to be shot and killed by Portland police within a five-month period. Due to his age and surrounding circumstances, Johnson's death by Sanford elicited extreme reactions from varied communities of Portland. Unlike previous deaths of people of color by the police in Portland, Johnson's death received widespread attention from mainstream media outlets. In response, some white citizens decried Johnson's death as unjustified police …

Bounding Box Improvement With Reinforcement Learning, Andrew Lewis Cleland

Dissertations and Theses

In this thesis, I explore a reinforcement learning technique for improving bounding box localizations of objects in images. The model takes as input a bounding box already known to overlap an object and aims to improve the fit of the box through a series of transformations that shift the location of the box by translation, or change its size or aspect ratio. Over the course of these actions, the model adapts to new information extracted from the image. This active localization approach contrasts with existing bounding-box regression methods, which extract information from the image only once. I implement, train, and …

Dark Current Rts-Noise In Silicon Image Sensors, Benjamin William Hendrickson

Dissertations and Theses

Random Telegraph Signal (RTS) noise is a random noise source defined by discrete and metastable changes in the magnitude of a signal. Though observed in a variety of physical processes, RTS is of particular interest to image sensor fabrication where progress in the suppression of other noise sources has elevated its noise contribution to the point of approaching the limiting noise source in scientific applications.

There have been two basic physical sources of RTS noise reported in image sensors. The first involves a charge trap in the oxide layer of the source follower in a CMOS image sensor. The capture …

Assessment Of Policy Alternatives For Mitigation Of Barriers To Ev Adoption, Bilgehan Yildiz

Dissertations and Theses

Electric Vehicle (EV) has become an increasingly important topic in recent years due to energy and environmental concerns. Governments started to focus on remedies to the upcoming climate change threat and seek solutions through policies and regulations. The negative impact of carbon emissions along with pressure from governmental and social organizations force automotive manufacturers to shift to alternative energy sources. However, EV transition is a complex problem because its stakeholders are very diverse including governments, policy makers, EV manufacturers, and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Consequently, the barriers to EV adoption are not only consumer oriented, rather exist under many categories. The …

An Analysis Of The Bizx Commercial Trade Exchange: The Attitudes And Motivations Behind Its Use, Ján André Montoya

Dissertations and Theses

The Global Financial Crisis underscored both the complexity and brittleness of the global financial system, especially for small to medium enterprises dependent on the current banking regime for credit. More than ever, we have also begun to see the disentanglement of small businesses from traditional banks at the local and regional level in the form of CDFIs, fintech alternative lending, and now complementary currencies. Through interviews with the management and members of the BizX complementary currency this study asks what the attitudes and motivations are behind its offering and use. In addition, it inquires into the economic and psychological benefits …

Anti-Lgb Hate Crimes: Political Threat Or Political Legitimization?, Johanna R. Shreve

Dissertations and Theses

While activists and others have argued that the legitimization of biased attitudes and stereotypes by political leaders foments violence against minority groups, criminological research in the U.S. has focused more on "threat" hypotheses that view hate crime as a retaliatory response to perceived gains or encroachment of targeted groups. Another view suggests that heightened public visibility of hate crimes or other bias issues, usually in the form of media coverage, increases hate crimes. This study compares the effect on anti-LGB crimes of events representing political threat (a court decision legalizing marriage equality) and political legitimization of bias (passage of a …

Bilingual Teachers' Experiences: Being English Learners, Becoming Teachers, And Bilingual Education, Carrie Susan Larson

Dissertations and Theses

Bilingual students are the fastest growing demographic group in U.S. P-12 public schools and offer promise and hope to our increasingly global workforce. However, many bilingual students are lagging behind in school, too many do not complete high school, and their schooling experiences are overshadowed by racial and linguistic segregation, low-academic tracking, and subtractive educational experiences. There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of bilingual and bicultural teachers and leaders who can include students' linguistic, cultural, and community assets in school. This qualitative research study explores the experiences of a specialized group of elementary bilingual and …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Justice Reinvestment Legislation In Oregon: Analyses Of State And County Implementation, Christopher Wade Dollar

Dissertations and Theses

Sentencing reform and "tough on crime" policies have assisted in the inflation of the United States' prison population by nearly 400% over the last 50 years. In 2003, justice reinvestment was conceptualized as a way to decrease recidivism and remedy the exorbitant correctional spending by reinvesting funds on rehabilitation and reentry assistance to those leaving custodial institutions. Early implementations of justice reinvestment in Connecticut and Texas achieved both savings and reductions in prison populations. This led to the creation of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance in 2010. Officials of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative sought …

The Cycles Of Violence Against Native Women: An Analysis Of Colonialism, Historical Legislation And The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act Of 2013, Genevieve M. Le May

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Violence against Native American Women is an epidemic in the United States. According to the Department of Justice, Native women experience sexual violence more than any other ethnic group (Department of Justice, 2013). Research by Juana Majel-Dixon 1^st Vice President of the National Congress of American Indians suggests that one out of three Native women will be raped in their lifetime, and six in ten will be physically assaulted (Majel-Dixon, 2012). More importantly, emerging research by Jana Walker, Senior Attorney and Director of the Indian Law Resource Center also reveals that the majority of their attackers are non-Natives and …

Perception Of The Online Degree By Accounting Hiring Gatekeepers Of Mid-Size Firms In The Northwestern U.S., Domanic Thomas

Dissertations and Theses

The latest research shows over 2.8 million higher education students or one-in-seven are enrolled in fully online programs. In fields such as accounting, students are able to complete their degree, pass a standardized exam, and enter the workforce with little to no work experience. Accounting firm human resources managers are primarily responsible for the recruitment and selection of candidates. Prior studies conducted show that these hiring gatekeepers prefer candidates with earned degrees in a traditional classroom environment when holding constant for all other factors. While many students invest in online degrees as an ideal pathway to employment, career advancement, and …

The Evolving Institutional Work Of The National Collegiate Athletic Association To Maintain Dominance In A Fragmented Field, Nite Calvin, Ige Abiodun, Marvin Washington

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highlights:

• Sport governance associations remain intact despite predictors of demise.

• NCAA learned to control boundaries, practices, and institutional cognitions.

• Expanding membership boundaries increased institutional dominance.

• Flexible practices allowed for multiple interests to coexist in institution.

• Cognitive understandings are strategically built, adjusted, and defended.

High-profile sport governance associations tend to remain intact despite numerous issues that would predict their demise. As such, these types of associations offer valuable contexts for understanding institutional maintenance work. The authors conducted a historical case study of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the U.S. More than 7000 pages of …

How Persevering Latina/O First-Generation College Students Navigate Their College Experience: Keeping Who They Are While Learning And Persisting In The Culture Of College, Angela Judith Balcacer

Dissertations and Theses

Latina/o first-generation college students, along with their families, are learning a new culture when considering going to four-year universities. While the conversation involving Latina/o first-generation college students can often focus on attrition, I am interested in exploring what, from participants' point of view, are the successes they experience as well as the most challenging obstacles they encounter on their journey to graduating from four-year universities. Employing the theoretical frameworks of constructivism, critical race theory, and cultural capital, the purpose of this study was to go beyond the conversation of Latina/o first-generation college student attrition by examining how they navigate postsecondary …

The Impact Of Online Professional Development On The Assessment Efficacy Of Novice Itinerant Teachers Of Students With Multiple Disabilities Including Visual Impairments, Jacqulyn Anne Donnenwirth Daniels

Dissertations and Theses

The primary question for this dissertation was: Does online professional development increase novice itinerant Teachers of Students with Visual impairments' (TVI) efficacy for assessing learning and literacy media for students with multiple disabilities including visual impairments? The literature suggested novice TVIs might experience low efficacy when implementing strategies unique to their job after leaving teacher-training programs. Working in an itinerant position can intensify perceptions of low efficacy. One area of low efficacy was conducting and reporting on the assessment of learning and literacy media (ALLM).

Using a quasi-experimental pre/post-design, data were collected from pre/postintervention knowledge questionnaires about the assessment process …

News Work: The Impact Of Corporate Newsroom Culture On News Workers & Community Reporting, Carey Lynne Higgins-Dobney

Dissertations and Theses

By virtue of their broadcast licenses, local television stations in the United States are bound to serve in the public interest of their community audiences. As federal regulations of those stations loosen and fewer owners increase their holdings across the country, however, local community needs are subjugated by corporate fiduciary responsibilities. Business practices reveal rampant consolidation of ownership, newsroom job description convergence, skilled human labor replaced by computer automation, and economically-driven downsizings, all in the name of profit. Even so, the people laboring under these conditions are expected to keep their communities informed with democracy- and citizenship-enhancing information.

This study …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet June 2018, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The June 2018 Monthly packet includes the May agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held May 2018.

Resilient Infrastructure Planning Exercise Summary Of Findings, Portland State Univeristy. Institute For Sustainable Solutions

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

According to NOAA (2018), the U.S. spent a record $306 billion on weather and climate disasters in 2017, up nearly $100 billion from the previous record in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina. From unprecedented rainfall and flooding from Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas, to ravaging wildfires and devastating mudslides near Santa Barbara, California, cities across the U.S. are grappling with how to better prepare for and recover from catastrophic natural disasters. These events bring into focus the need to prepare for similarly unprecedented events in Portland.

The Resilient Infrastructure Planning Exercise (RIPE) began in early 2017 as an effort to better …

Conspiracy Theories And The Zika Epidemic, Shawn Smallman

International & Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

After a Zika outbreak began in Brazil in April 2015, narratives blamed the virus on a variety of international actors, including chemical companies and the Gates Foundation. Many of these narratives drew upon older conspiracy theories that had circulated in Latin America during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. Whether these narratives denounced transgenic mosquitoes or pesticides, they reflected not only the fear created by a mysterious wave of birth defects but also a profound mistrust of health authorities and transnational corporations. This paper will examine the narratives that circulated on YouTube, blogs, podcasts, and other alternative media sources, which typically …

Equity Arguments In News Reporting On School Nutrition Policy, Liana B. Winett, Lori Dorfman, Larissa Yoshino, Laura Nixon

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose: In two related studies, we examined how equity-based arguments featured in news debate over federal school nutrition policy. Methods: We conducted content analyses of national and local print and broadcast news (September 1, 2014-December 31, 2015), examining arguments rooted in appeals about equity and/or disparities. Results: Equity and/or disparities appeals appeared in 24% television, 14% national print, and 5% local print stories. Socioeconomic inequities were mentioned most; racial/ethnic inequities appeared minimally. Conclusions: Neither equity nor disparity featured prominently in this news debate over policy created to address children's nutritional inequities. When included, arguments focused on overcoming inequities' effects rather …

The Pacific Sentinel, June 2018, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

The Pacific Sentinel

Editor: Kasey Colton

Articles in this issue include:

• What's Happening;
• 2016 Election Meddling: A Prototype In Developing A Science of Manipulation?;
• Shoo Petitioner, Don't Bother Me;
• Obligatory Freedom: Could Compulsory Voting Work in the USA?;
• Podcasting Since the Dawn of Time: How Communication has Evolved to The Internet Age;
• Boy's Club: The United States' Obsession with Institutionalizing Toxic Masculinity;
• Don't Shoot the Messenger;
• Welcome to Your Cell: The Emergence of Virtual Reality in Art and Activism;
• This Is America's Ambiance is Psychodrama; and
• Bull Goose Baker: A Makeshift Teenage Rebellion

Pedestrian Observation And Data Collection Curriculum Guide, Jennifer Dill, Tara Beth Goddard

TREC Final Reports

This guidebook provides a comprehensive set of class exercises suitable for students in courses related to travel behavior, traffic safety, urban planning and design, community health, or civil engineering. Exercises include activities developed through this project as well as an extensive set of educational materials drawn from online resources. The exercises developed as part of this project focus on pedestrians. They include elements of both traditional traffic counts and behavioral components, the latter of which are often lacking from current data collections efforts. By encouraging students to consider behavioral interactions of roadway users, these exercises can provide students with field …

Who Teaches Technical And Professional Communication Service Courses?: Survey Results And Case Studies From A National Study Of Instructors From All Carnegie Institutional Types, Sarah Read, Michael J. Michaud

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, we offer answers to the question, “Who teaches the technical and professional communication service course and in what institutional situations?” We present data from a national online survey of technical and professional communication instructors from across all Carnegie institutional types (2- and 4-year). In addition, we share four case-studies of survey respondents whose situations present the greatest challenges facing those who seek to improve or reform the technical and professional communication service course. We close the article by putting the case studies into the context of the reported survey data and arguing for how advocates for the …

Mass Accretion And Ozone Reactivity Of Idealized Indoor Surfaces In Mechanically Or Naturally Ventilated Indoor Environments, Elliott T. Gall, Donghyun Rim

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In indoor environments, accretion of mass to materials may provide sites for surface chemistry that differ from those of the original material. Since indoor surfaces are a major sink of oxidant gases, surface mass accretion may impact indoor O₃ chemistry. In this study, the effect of surface mass accretion on O₃ surface deposition was tested by deploying cleaned borosilicate glass plates in two types of indoor environments: a mechanically ventilated ( MV ) office and a naturally ventilated ( NV ) residence located in Singapore. In each environment, seven replicate glass plates and one field blank were deployed …

The Influence Of Information On Public Support For Solitary Confinement: A Test Of Belief Updating And Confirmation Bias, Kayla J. Labranche

Dissertations and Theses

There is limited research measuring public opinion about the correctional practice of solitary confinement (SC). Given that public opinion can influence policies, it is important to determine whether or not one's beliefs can be updated upon receiving information about the use and effect of SC. Prior research indicates that public opinion is malleable, and thus, may be susceptible to modification. Though, people may be more willing to update their beliefs when the information they receive confirms their existing beliefs (i.e., confirmation bias). This study used an experimental design in which participants were asked to provide their opinions on a series …

Sensing Building Structure Using Uwb Radios For Disaster Recovery, Jeong Eun Lee

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis studies the problem of estimating the interior structure of a collapsed building using embedded Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radios as sensors. The two major sensing problems needed to build the mapping system are determining wall type and wall orientation. We develop sensing algorithms that determine (1) load-bearing wall composition, thickness, and location and (2) wall position within the indoor cavity. We use extensive experimentation and measurement to develop those algorithms.

In order to identify wall types and locations, our research approach uses Received Signal Strength (RSS) measurement between pairs of UWB radios. We create an extensive database of UWB signal …

Interplay Of Transcription Factor E And Spt4/5 During Transcription Initiation In Pyrococcus Furiosus, Kimberly Kay Sheffield

Dissertations and Theses

Transcription, the first step in gene expression, is a highly regulated process which relies on a multi-protein complex to occur. Among these proteins are transcription factors, including initiation and elongation factors, which play differing roles in early and late stages of transcription. The mechanisms of transition from transcription initiation to elongation are not well understood in archaea, nor are the structures of the transcription factors involved. For transcription to occur in vitro, transcription factors TATA binding protein (TBP) and Transcription Factor B (TFB) are sufficient to allow RNA polymerase (RNAP) to synthesize RNA from template DNA. Another factor, Transcription …

Why The Gender Of Traditional Authorities Matters: Intersectionality And Women’S Rights Advocacy In Malawi, Ragnhild L. Muriaas, Vibeke Wang, Lindsay J. Benstead, Boniface Dulani

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Traditional leadership often coexists with modern political institutions, yet we know little about how traditional and state authority cues—or those from male or female sources—affect public opinion. Using an original survey experiment of 1,381 Malawians embedded in the 2016 Local Governance Performance Index (LGPI), we randomly assign respondents into one of four treatment groups or a control group to hear messages about a child marriage reform from a female or male traditional authority (TA) or parliamentarian. In the sample as a whole, the female TA is as effective as the control (i.e., no endorsement), while other messengers elicit lower support …