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Nine Times Out Of Ten, You Don't Die, Patrick Ronald Wensink

Dissertations and Theses

My novel, "Nine Times Out of Ten, You Don't Die," is the story of Layla Wisnewski and her quest to write a book about her famous father. In the 1970s, "Big Dan" Wisnewski was a motorcycle stuntman who broke more bones than anyone living. He jumped cars and buses and rivers atop a white Harley Davidson. Big Dan was considered an American Hero.

Fast forward forty years, Big Dan has been dead for decades, and his daughter Layla is writing a book about his life. While researching the book, she learns she was kidnapped as a baby. This …

Fuse: People With Frequent Utilization Of Public Services In Clackamas County, Oregon: Potential Service Enhancements, Karen Cellarius, Marisa Zapata, Eric Einspruch, Cameron Mulder, Thuan Duong, Aliza Tuttle

Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative Publications and Presentations

The goal of this study was to answer five very specific questions about individuals with high service utilization and the systems that serve them. The data for this study comes from administrative system data, informational conversations and meetings with community partners, formal interviews with service providers, and interviews with consumers with frequent service utilization.

Limitations: The rates of mental illness, addiction and homelessness are likely to be higher than they appear in this report due to the way these characteristics were gathered or recorded in system databases. Historically marginalized populations are increasingly underrepresented in datasets.

The Nonprofit Nerd (July 2019), The Nonprofit Institute At Portland State University

The Nonprofit Institute Newsletter

This month’s topic is learning program evaluation.

This month we are excited to share the perspective and experience of a recent certificate recipient from The Nonprofit Institute's Professional Certificate in Nonprofit Program Evaluation, a partnership with WVDO.

We celebrate the accomplishments of this year's cohort, including our interviewee Barrett Ebright Karnes, for completing the Professional Certificate in Nonprofit Program Evaluation. This year's participants explored a wide range of questions and circumstances related to program evaluation and their organizations. Thanks to the diversity of the nonprofit sector represented in the cohort, we saw how program evaluation applied across many different service …

Training Needs Of Peer And Non-Peer Transition Service Providers: Results Of A National Survey, Pauline Jivanjee, Leigh Grover, Kristin Thorp, Brie Masselli, Johanna Bergan, Eileen Brennan

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Participatory action research processes guided a national online survey of service providers working with transition age youth with mental health challenges. The survey investigated transition service providers’ ratings of the importance of competencies and skills, self-assessed need for training in these competencies and skills, their preferred training modalities, and obstacles to engaging in training. The 254 participants identified trauma-informed care, understanding youth culture, promoting natural supports, and using culturally responsive practices as most important training needs. Age, years in current job, years in transition work, and race/ethnicity predicted training needs regarding some competencies and skills. Peer providers expressed preferences for …

Culturally Responsive Social Work Methods For Use With Indigenous Peoples, Sara Davidson Cowling

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

The history of the American social work profession and its interactions with Indigenous people is fraught with cultural erasure. Social workers have been complicit and outright participatory in various forms of settler state violence, especially in the form of forced cultural assimilation through the Indian Adoption Project and Indian Residential schools. While these institutions are now closed, and federal law ostensibly prevents such harms from recurring, Indigenous people are often rightfully suspect of social workers and the work they do. To avoid perpetuating American settler state violence, social workers need to approach their work with a solid analysis of the …

2019 Commencement Program, Israel Bayer, Doreen Dodgen-Magee, Yasuhisa Iida, Rick Miller, Nanette Reid

Commencement Archives 2010-19

The program for the Portland State University 2019 Commencement ceremonies, held June 14, 15, and 16, 2019.

Doreen Dodgen-Magee gave the commencement address to the Graduate School of Education ceremony on June 14, 2019.

Rick Miller, Yasuhisa "Yaz" Iida, and Nanette Reid delivered keynote addresses to the School of Business ceremonies on June 15, 2019.

Israel Bayer gave the commencement address and received an honorary doctorate during the Professional Schools ceremony on June 16, 2019.

Working Paper No. 05, Proudhon, Bakunin And Anarcho-Socialism, Lauren Sweger-Hollingsworth

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin advanced ideas supporting what can be identified as anarcho-socialism, and the distinctness in their approaches can also be associated with splits that emerged with the First International Workingmen’s Association. For Proudhon, the institution of property entrenches inequality. In Proudhon’s judgement, society must orient towards advancing independence, proportionality, equality, and individual autonomy without limitations from legal structures. In Bakunin’s anarcho-socialist view, society must reject all forms of authority. In Bakunin’s conception of society, economic and political structures must be constructed from base to summit, founded upon the rights of free …

Working Paper No. 31, Marx And Proudhon: Two Visions Of Socialism, Lillian Garcia

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon espoused fundamentally different visions of socialism. Marx regarded Proudhon with initial enthusiasm and joined the left at large in celebrating his 1840 essay, What is Property? However, in 1846, when Proudhon attempted to solve the problems of capitalism in his work, System of Economic of Contradictions or The Philosophy of Poverty, Marx took to his pen for an unsparing attack, authoring his The Poverty of Philosophy. At the crux of their split were two analyses of the status of labor and two competing prescriptions for change. While …

Rethinking Services With Communities Of Color: Why Culturally Specific Organizations Are The Preferred Service Delivery Model, Ann Curry-Stevens, Gerald Deloney, Matt Morton

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Racial disparities in social, education and health services continue unabated despite efforts to address them. At the margins of the service delivery system are lesser-known and minimally researched programs known as “culturally specific organizations” that have been developed by and with communities of color. These are organizations that have been developed by a specific community of color and continue to serve that same community of color. This article shares the insights of three leaders in racial equity, who have been immersed in Portland-based organizations for many years: two as organizational leaders and one as an academic research partner. The paper …

Impactful Care: Addressing Social Determinants Of Health Across Health Systems, Nicole Lisa Friedman

Dissertations and Theses

There is emerging evidence that addressing health-related social needs through enhanced clinical-community linkages can improve health outcomes and reduce costs. Unmet health-related social needs, such as food insecurity, inadequate or unstable housing, and lack of access to transportation may increase the risk of developing chronic conditions, reduce an individual's ability to manage these conditions, increase health care costs, and lead to avoidable health care utilization. In response, work on social needs is happening across large health systems in the United States, but the pace of progress is slow and accountability is diffuse.

The goal of this applied research project is …

Learning From Culturally Specific Programs And Their Impact On Latino Parent Engagement, Analucia Lopezrevoredo

Dissertations and Theses

Latinos are the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States. Academically, they are significantly trailing their non-Latino peers in graduation and overall educational attainment. Among many socioeconomic factors, parent engagement has been identified as being a defining indicator of student success. Reflective of racial and class disparities, this study explored with the use of critical race and intersectionality theory, that low Latino parent engagement is a result of the historical devaluing and omission of Latino culture, history and language from formal academic settings, and compounding social factors that make engagement complex for Latino immigrants in America …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet June 2019, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The June 2019 Monthly packet includes the May agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held May 6, 2019.

The Additional Files included the Revised Academic Requirements Committee (ARC) Annual Report

Dementia-Related Neuropsychological Testing Considerations In Non-Hispanic White And Latino/Hispanic Populations, Shanna L. Burke, Mitra Naseh, Miriam Rodriguez, Aaron Burgess, David Loewenstein

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Hispanic individuals are at greater risk for health disparities, less than optimal health care, and are diagnosed at later stages of cognitive impairment than white non-Hispanics. Acculturation and different attitudes toward test-taking may result in decrements in performance, especially on unfamiliar measures that emphasize speed and accuracy. Non-Hispanic individuals often outperform Hispanic individuals on cognitive and neuropsychological measures in community and clinical populations. Current neuropsychological testing may not provide accurate data related to monolingual and bilingual individuals of Hispanic descent. Testing instruments were identified by searching academic databases using combinations of relevant search terms. Neuropsychological instruments were included if they …

The Nonprofit Nerd (June 2019), The Nonprofit Institute At Portland State University

The Nonprofit Institute Newsletter

This month’s topic is evaluation with immigrant communities.

For years, immigration and immigrant communities have been at the center of a national and international conversation about nationhood, global dynamics, and human rights. Despite the enormity of this complex conversation, the below interview with Nelda Reyes, principal at AB Cultural Drivers, highlights the possibilities evaluators and researchers have working with these populations.

We hope that through reading this edition, our readers feel prepared to “be of service,” as Nelda puts it, when researching or evaluating with diverse and multi-dimensional immigrant communities.

Let the resources and insights we share in The Nonprofit …

Confronting Gentrification: Can Creative Interventions Help People Keep More Than Just Their Homes?, Amie Thurber, Janine Christiano

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Gentrification is changing the landscape of many American cities. As land values rise, people may lose their homes, neighbors, and sites of significance, along with their sense of place, community, and history. There is a critical need to build and preserve affordable housing, yet housing alone will not address the more than material losses. What role can the arts play in sustaining place attachments, restoring relationships, and building place knowledge in gentrifying neighborhoods? This paper explores this question through a systematic review of current research. We identify four prominent alternative interventions in gentrifying neighborhoods—creative placemaking, public pedagogy, community organizing, and …

Development Of The Aaspire Web Accessibility Guidelines For Autistic Web Users, Dora Raymaker, Steven K. Kapp, Katherine E. Mcdonald, Michael Weiner, Elesia Ashkenazy, Christina Nicolaidis

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Websites figure predominantly in everyday life. However, many websites remain inaccessible to autistic people, and existing efforts to improve accessibility are in early stages, do not directly include autistic users in their development, or have not been empirically evaluated. The Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE) used a community-based participatory research approach to create a website to improve health care access for autistic adults. We used the creation of that website as a “living laboratory” to develop the AASPIRE Web Accessibility Guidelines for Autistic Web Users. Our guidelines are grounded in accessibility theory, had autistic end-user involvement …

Integrating Multiple Narratives In Human Behavior Across The Lifespan Curriculum, Amethyst R. Dawson

University Honors Theses

Bachelors' of Social Work programs have attempted to highlight diversity and multiculturalism since the 1960's, when the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) required that social work, "must make special, continued efforts to enrich its program by providing racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in its student body and at all levels of instruction and research personnel, and by providing corresponding educational supports." Despite this mandate, the actual application of diversity and multiculturalism in social work programs is marked by shortcomings.

To address this problem, some scholars have looked at the curriculum within social work programs, as well as different approaches …

How Schools Encourage Incarceration: The School-To-Prison Pipeline And How It Fails Our Children, Madeline S. Buss

University Honors Theses

In the United States, mass incarceration is a way of life. In this literature review, the link between harsh policies in schools, punishment, and later odds of incarceration are explored- with a special interest on the disproportionate impact for students of color. Through literature reviews and analysis, I will examine the primary causes of the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP). The researchers examined spanned many disciplines (education, to criminology, to psychology) and methodological approaches, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method. The findings were near unanimous; policies in schools that sought to punish or enforce zero-tolerance were disproportionately punitive toward students of color, most …

Fighting Back Against Criminalization Of Homelessness: Martin V. City Of Boise Case Study, Kaitlyn Dey

University Honors Theses

As of 2018, Boise, Idaho is the fastest growing city in the entire United States. As the city continues to grow housing and homelessness is becoming a greater concern. The means of addressing homelessness in Boise, however, has relied heavily on criminalization. In 2009, a plaintiff filed a lawsuit against the City of Boise challenging city bans on camping and sleeping in public. The case, Martin v. City of Boise (formerly Bell v. City of Boise), has set a precedent across the country regarding criminalization of homelessness, positing the laws as a violation of the Eighth Amendment. This thesis uses …

Suicidal Ideation And Mindfulness Practice In Lgbtq Youth, Mckenna R. Martin

University Honors Theses

Mindfulness as therapeutic practice has been growing in usefulness the last decade, particularly when looking at the impact of mindfulness on depression (Deyo, Wilson, Ong, and Koopman, 2009). A small number of studies have extended beyond depression and focused on the impact of mindfulness on suicidal ideation, one of which were conducted with youth. There is need for further consideration and research surrounding mindfulness practice and LGBTQ youth (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer - identified as ages 15-24) who experience suicidal ideation. There is also a need for suicide prevention programming to expand practitioners’ strategies. Given the prevalence and devastating …

Equitable Academia For Students With Disabilities, Mia Cremer

University Honors Theses

Higher education has been historically ableist based on the exclusivity of academia. This qualitative study describes how the identity of students with disabilities changes through academia. The study included semi-structured interviews with four students with disabilities who are registered with the Disability Resource Center at PSU University. Narrative inquiry revealed how the students’ experience in academia revealed the infrastructure, ableism, accessibility, and classroom climate. The social model of disability provided the theoretical framework throughout the study. The social model of disability identifies how the environmental, social factors, and attitudes towards a person with an impairment prevents them from achieving equity. …

Pilot Study Investigating The Effectiveness Of The Active Workplace Study Through A Dissemination Lens, Mary Beth Barnum

University Honors Theses

There are many studies demonstrating the health risks associated with low physical activity and sedentary behavior. Considering that much of an adult’s time prior to retirement is spent in their work environment, researchers have recognized that sedentary work environments play a significant role in a person’s overall level of sedentary behavior and physical activity. Researchers are therefore examining workplace intervention programs aimed to minimize sedentary behavior and improve the overall working environment, including interpersonal and intrapersonal communications between employees and their supervisors. However, in order for this research to positively impact the large population of sedentary workers it is important …

Uprooting: How Can I Ethically Sell My Home In A Gentrifying Neighborhood?, Amie Thurber

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

In areas that are rapidly gentrifying, the decisions sellers make—to whom to sell, and for how much to sell—are of particular consequence to their neighborhood. As someone who studies the myriad harms of gentrification, these decisions were particularly acute when I was facing them myself. Interweaving Nashville history, gentrification scholarship, and personal reflection, this article traces the ways my family navigated the question of how ethically to sell our home in a gentrifying market in order to be accountable to the neighborhoods we left behind.

Culturally Responsive Social Work Methods For Use With Indigenous Peoples, Sara Davidson Cowling

Student Research Symposium

The history of the American social work profession and its interactions with Indigenous people is intimately connected to colonial imperialism. Social workers have been complicit and outright participatory in various forms of settler state violence, especially in the form of forced cultural assimilation through the Indian Adoption Project and Indian Residential schools. While these institutions are now closed, and federal law ostensibly prevents such harms from recurring, Indigenous people are often rightfully suspect of social workers and the work they do.

How can non-Indigenous people approach the profession of social work through a decolonizing lens? How can we center Indigenous …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet May 2019, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The May 2019 Monthly packet includes the May agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held April 2019.

It's Not Easy - Impacts Of Suicide Prevention Research On Study Staff, Jason I. Chen, Ginnifer L. Mastarone, Lauren M. Denneson

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Suicide prevention researchers who work with individuals at high risk of suicide or are exposed to details of suicide attempts and deaths may experience negative impacts on their own well-being. This is not unlike the experiences of mental health providers, where repeated exposure to clients' difficult experiences gas long been identified as an occupational risk (Molnar et al., 2017). however, there have been few studies evaluating how exposure to details of suicide-related behavior impacts researcher well-being. This gap in the literature is worrisome, as researcher' mental health and well-being might be negatively impacted by repeated exposure to graphic details of …

Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published 2-3 times a year. In this issue: How vacations keep employees engaged; Professor Ken Ruoff explores what the abdication of the emperor means for Japan; a program founded by alumnus Brendan Norman secures internships for veterans on public lands; how hardship funds make a difference for PSU students; reimagining the Burnside Bridge; and more.

Using “Remote” Training And Coaching To Increase Providers’ Skills For Working Effectively With Older Youth And Young Adults With Serious Mental Health Conditions, Janet S. Walker, Caitlin Baird

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since about the turn of the century, a growing awareness of the poor outcomes resulting from “as usual” community mental health care has led to increasing efforts to implement programs and interventions with empirical evidence of effectiveness. However, these efforts have encountered numerous barriers, in particular the high cost of implementation, which has severely limited uptake and sustainment of empiricallysupported programs and interventions. Typically, the largest contributor to cost is the training and coaching required to ensure provider competence and fidelity to the intervention or program model. This paper describes a social innovation that aims to provide high-quality training and …

An Equitable Approach To Addressing Mental Illness Within U.S. Study Abroad Programs, Clark J. Hazel

University Honors Theses

Research within the field of study abroad with a focus on college students within the United States with a mental illness has shown a need for an inclusive and equitable approach to the mental health screening and incorporating a collaborative process between the student, faculty leading the Short-Term Faculty-Led program and resource centers. This paper has incorporated findings as well as identified areas of improvements and new collaborative and trauma informed approaches that can be incorporated into study abroad programs. This entails students being informed of their rights to privacy, explanation of the process before self disclosure of their mental …

Raps Sheet, May 2019, Retirement Association Of Portland State

RAPS Sheet: Monthly Newsletter

No abstract provided.