Digital Commons Network^™

Sustaining Rural Place: Rethinking Design Principles For Social Sustainability In Rural America, Carlie C. Donnelly

University Honors Theses

Although the population of Rural America is declining, we will likely never live in a country that does not need rural communities to sustain our natural resources. The field of urban design has developed great strategies for creating livable communities, but they are not universal strategies. The design of rural towns and community places has been neglected from the conversation of urban design principles as they are not directly applicable because of Rural America's lack of density which also results in an alternate social system. Through analysis of urban design principles and rural place making case studies, this thesis bridges …

Through The Looking Glass: Viewing First-Year Composition Through The Lens Of Information Literacy, Alexandria Chisholm, Brett Spencer

Communications in Information Literacy

This paper presents a case study of how librarians can situate themselves as pedagogical partners by bringing their unique information literacy perspective and expertise to the programmatic assessment process. This report resulted from the Thun Library and the Penn State Berks Composition Program's collaboration to assess the institution’s first-year composition (FYC) course. From previous programmatic assessments of their students’ work, the faculty had a sense that students struggled with source use in their rhetoric but found it difficult to pinpoint students’ exact source issues. By adapting a rubric theoretically-grounded in the ACRL Framework to deconstruct the concept of source use …

Community-Based Participatory Research (Cbpr): Towards Equitable Involvement Of Community In Psychology Research, Susan E. Collins, Seema L. Clifasefi, Joey Stanton, Leap Advisory Board, Eleanor Gil-Kashiwabara, Kee J.E. Straits, Patricia Rodriguez Espinosa, Andel V. Nicasio, Michele P. Andrasik, Starlyn M. Hawes, Kimberly A. Miller, Lonnie A. Nelson, Victoria E. Orfaly, Bonnie M. Duran, Nina Wallerstein

Regional Research Institute for Human Services

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) answers the call for more patient-centered, community-driven research approaches to address growing health disparities. CBPR is a collaborative research approach that equitably involves community members, researchers, and other stakeholders in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each bring. The aim of CBPR is to combine knowledge and action to create positive and lasting social change. With its origins in psychology, sociology, and critical pedagogy, CBPR has become a common research approach in the fields of public health, medicine, and nursing. Although it is well aligned with psychology’s ethical principles and research aims, it …

A Blade Of Grass Magazine Issue 1: Where?, A Blade Of Grass

A Blade of Grass

Issue 1: Where?

This inaugural issue of A Blade of Grass Magazine engages the tendency of socially engaged art to inhabit everyday places, not just those meant for art.

Framing Livability: A Strategic And Creative Communication Approach To Improving Support For Public Transportation In Oregon, Deboarh Morrison, Autumn Shaffer, Rebecca Lewis, Hannah Lewman

TREC Final Reports

Livability of place is a central theme in developing concepts about transit ridership. In order to develop strategy for a compelling public communication campaign to increase transit ridership, this project frames the connections between livability and transit and offers a set of public campaign examples. A national survey taken of riders provides possible message strategies. With this information, a creative strategy team was tasked with developing a strategy for messaging and developed the Green Rider profile. Recommendations for creative direction and further study are offered.

Removing Dams, Constructing Science: Watershed Restoration Through A Socio-Eco-Technical Systems Lens, Zbigniew Jakub Grabowski

Dissertations and Theses

Ecological conservation and restoration in the anthropocene must struggle with overlapping drivers of biodiversity and cultural loss; ruptures of the ecological environment mirror ruptures of human relationships with nature. And yet technology cannot remove humans from nature; technological and infrastructural reconfigurations of nature create new vulnerabilities and risks for humans and ecosystems alike. How can conservation and restoration science productively grapple with complex infrastructure systems and decision-making processes as biophysical and social drivers of ecosystem change?

Using dam removals in the USA and in the Mid Columbia River region of the Pacific Northwest, this dissertation develops a conceptual framework for …

Building Successful P-3 Initiatives: Foundations And Catalysts For Systems Change, Lindsey Brianna Patterson, Beth L. Green, Callie H. Lambarth, Mackenzie Burton, Diane Reid

Early Childhood

Across the United States, there is a growing recognition that early education and K-12 systems require transformative changes to address racial, ethnic, linguistic and economic disparities in school readiness and success.

Prenatal-through-Grade-3 (P-3) initiatives address these disparities by coordinating, strengthening and aligning fragmented support systems for families and children from birth through third grade.

These increasingly popular initiatives:

• Are based on accumulating evidence that standalone early childhood and school-based programs are not sufficient to sustain long-term success for children facing early childhood inequities
• Take a collective impact approach that brings families, early childhood providers, K-12 staff and other partners together …

Metamorphosis Inside And Out: Transformative Learning At Portland State University, Vicki Reitenauer, Katherine Elaine Draper-Beard, Noah Schultz

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, the authors (a faculty member and two former students) describe the trajectory that Portland State University has taken over its history to institutionalize transformative learning opportunities within its comprehensive general education program, University Studies. Following a description of the institutional changes that resulted in the community-based, experientially focused courses at the heart of University Studies, the authors explore one particular community partnership involving both a state agency and the national Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, dedicated to offering transformative experiences in which incarcerated and non-incarcerated students learn together inside correctional facilities. Finally, each author shares a reflective essay …

Finding The Middle: Overcoming Challenges To Building Missing Middle Housing, Ryan Winterberg-Lipp

Metroscape

In the Portland metro area and across the state, the demographics of cities are changing. Urban populations and housing prices are rising, while household sizes are declining with an aging baby boomer generation and younger households both delaying marriage and children and having fewer children. With these changing dynamics, many Portland metro communities are looking to missing middle housing types to “provide for the housing needs of citizens of the state” as called for in the Oregon Statewide Planning Goals and Guidelines. With increasing interest in missing middle housing as a way to provide more housing choices for area households …

Reorganizing School Lunch For A More Just And Sustainable Food System In The Us, Jennifer Gaddis, Amy K. Coplen

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Public school lunch programs in the United States are contested political terrains shaped by government agencies, civil society activists, and agri-food companies. The particular organization of these programs has consequences for public health, social justice, and ecological sustainability. This contribution draws on political economy, critical food studies, and feminist economics to analyze the US National School Lunch Program, one of the world's oldest and largest government-sponsored school lunch programs. It makes visible the social and environmental costs of the "heat-and-serve" economy, where widely used metrics consider only the speed and volume of service as productive work. This study demonstrates that …

Exploring Cap-And-Trade: A California Case Study, Madison Daisy Hathaway

University Honors Theses

Climate change is an urgent issue unlike anything humanity has ever faced. This thesis explores a market-based tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming. Specifically, it uses the California cap-and-trade program as a case study. It provides background information on this program, which was established from the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) and in 2017 was extended to 2030. Evaluating market-based tools is becoming increasingly important as countries and states look for ways to reduce climate pollution and create investments in a clean energy future. Through analysis of government reports and a literature …

Scaling Sustainable Infrastructure: District Design For The Triple Bottom Line, Anika R. Hall

University Honors Theses

Multiple forms of infrastructure are required to make anywhere habitable by modern standards. These systems include black and gray water treatment, stormwater management, electricity generation, cooling/heating systems, and amenities. There are multiple methods to address all these systems, which are optimized at different scales. As urban populations rise, and resources become limited, cities are being pushed to grow in creative and sustainable ways. This requires consideration of the social, economic and environmental sustainability of the growth strategies chosen. To do this properly, strategies to address each required infrastructure system must be analyzed, considering their pros and cons with regards to …

Open Engagement 2018 Catalog, Jen Delos Reyes

Open Engagement

2018 — Queens, New York — SUSTAINABILITY

"Open Engagement is an artist-led initiative directed and founded by Jen Delos Reyes committed to expanding the dialogue around and serving as a site of care for the field of socially engaged art. We highlight the work of transdisciplinary artists, activists, students, scholars, community members, and organizations working within the complex social issues and struggles of our time. Since 2007, OE has presented ten conferences in two countries and six cities, hosting over 1,800 presenters and over 7,000 attendees. In addition, OE managed a publishing arm, and assembled a national consortium of institutions, …

A Fair Distribution Of Accessibility: Interpreting Civil Rights Regulations For Regional Transportation Plans, Karel Martens, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The US Department of Transportation requires metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to consider social equity in their plans and projects in accordance with civil rights–related laws. In this paper, we suggest four interpretations of directives’ distributional standards in relation to accessibility. Employing this framework, we review the equity assessments of regional plans of the ten largest MPOs in the United States. Against our expectations, we find that MPOs tend to employ relatively strong distributional standards, albeit never explicitly. We argue that more explicit guidance regarding standards would improve the fairness and consistency of planning practice

The Contribution Of Transportation And Land Use To Citizen Perceptions Of Livability In Oregon Mpos, Rebecca Lewis, Robert Parker

TREC Final Reports

What is livability? How does the built environment influence resident perceptions of livability? Although livability is a broadly used term and a key goal in land use and transportation plans at the state level, it is unclear whether residents think their neighborhoods are livable and what contributes to their perception of livability. The purpose of this project was to understand how Oregonians, in neighborhoods of varying densities and within Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), perceive livability at the nexus of transportation and land use. We sought to understand how residents define and perceive livability in three different MPOs in the state: …

Examining Sense Of Place For Marginalized Communities In Community Gardens, Jocelyn Rodriguez

University Honors Theses

This paper critically examines community garden relationships with particular reference to marginalized communities in Portland, OR. The objective of this study is to explore how gardeners feel about their gardens, why they feel that way and to determine what that garden space does for them. I will discuss the demographics of the neighborhoods the gardens are in to identify the hardships their residents face. Through interviews, I examine relationships participants have with community gardens as spaces that are currently being held by marginalized communities with a sense of place framework.

Navigating Roadblocks: First-Year Writing Challenges Through The Lens Of The Acrl Framework, Glenda M. Insua, Catherine Lantz, Annie Armstrong

Communications in Information Literacy

Effectively integrating the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy into existing instructional models requires that librarians first understand the host of challenges that many first-year students encounter when conducting research for the first time. This study employs qualitative analysis of semi-structured student interviews to explore how students conceive of and pursue the research process, and how they try to mitigate—and in some cases surmount—the roadblocks they encounter. Although students reported several difficulties, three main roadblocks arose: challenges with understanding academic articles, challenges with the topic/theme of the course, and challenges with navigating the physical space of the library. Our findings demonstrate …

Meeting Students Where They Are: Using Rubric-Based Assessment To Modify An Information Literacy Curriculum, Brianne Markowski, Lyda Mccartin, Stephanie Evers

Communications in Information Literacy

The authors conducted a performance-based assessment of information literacy to determine if students in a first-year experience course were finding relevant sources, using evidence from sources effectively, and attributing sources correctly. A modified AAC&U VALUE rubric was applied to 154 student research papers collected in fall 2015 and fall 2016. Study results indicate that students in the sample were able to find relevant and appropriate sources for their research papers; however, they were not using evidence to effectively support an argument or attributing sources correctly. The authors discuss changes to the library instruction curriculum informed by the assessment results.

Transferring Sustainability Solutions Across Contexts Through City–University Partnerships, Lauren Withycombe Keeler, Fletcher Beaudoin, Amy M. Lerner, Beatrice John, Richard Beecroft, Kaidi Tamm, Arnim Wiek, Daniel J. Lang

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

The urgency of climate change and other sustainability challenges makes transferring and scaling solutions between cities a necessity. However, solutions are deeply contextual. To accelerate solution efforts, there is a need to understand how context shapes the development of solutions. Universities are well positioned to work with cities on transferring solutions from and to other cities. This paper analyses five case studies of city–university partnerships in three countries on transferring solutions. Our analysis suggests that understanding the interest, the action on sustainability, and the individual and collective sustainability competences on the part of the city administration and the university can …

Assessment As Critical Programmatic Reflection, Vicki Reitenauer, Rowanna L. Carpenter

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article argues that general education assessment is an opportunity for engaging faculty and the general education program as a whole in critical reflection on the practices and pedagogies that affect the entire undergraduate body. Through intentional assessment practices tied to learning outcomes, pedagogical expectations, and faculty and student classroom experience, an assessment program can meet accreditation expectations while serving as a rich location for critical reflection and continuous improvement. To illustrate, this article takes the reader through a year in the life of University Studies' assessment at Portland State University. It provides details about the individual elements of our …

"Diversity," Anti-Racism, And Decolonizing Service Learning In The Capstone Experience, W. Tracy Dillon, Judy Bluehorse Skelton, Vicki Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This retrospective on service learning in the development of University Studies Capstones, the senior-level requirement in the University Studies general education program at Portland State University, explores how the original framers of University Studies anticipated the pitfalls of "pedagogies of whiteness" in deploying service learning as the hallmark pedagogical feature of the program; includes a case study of a Capstone course that centers on Indigenous ways of knowing, learning, and teaching through its pedagogy; and identifies the formative presence of Capstone faculty committed to anti-racist and anti-imperialist pedagogies. From a variety of institutional and disciplinary standpoints and through long association …

Closing Schools Is Like “Taking Away Part Of My Body”: The Impact Of Gentrification On Neighborhood, Public Schools In Inner Northeast Portland, Leanne Claire Serbulo

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This “politically engaged educational ethnography” explores the role that gentrification played in the disinvestment of inner Northeast Portland neighborhood schools (Lipman, 2009, 216). Inner Northeast Portland, Oregon, USA, a predominately African American neighborhood, began gentrifying in the mid-1990s. As investment flooded into the neighborhood, its schools paradoxically declined, losing students and resources. As longtime resident families were displaced from gentrification pressures, newer white, middle-class residents utilized the school choice program to opt-out of sending their kids to the neighborhood schools. Facing declining community support, inner Northeast schools were targeted for closure or redesign. Despite these challenges, the longtime resident community …

California's Paradigm Shift From Los To Vmt As A Transportation Impact Metric: Policies, Politics, And Possibilities, Robert Liberty, Lynn Peterson

PSU Transportation Seminars

As part of California's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the state has passed a law leading to a radical shift in how it analyzes the traffic impacts of new land use developments and transportation projects. SB 743's goal is to "more appropriately balance the needs of congestion management with statewide goals related to infill development, promotion of public health through active transportation, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."

The new measure of transportation impacts will be based on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) instead of level of service (LOS). This ground shift has broad implications for lead agencies, planners, MPOs, …

Building Planner Commitment: Are California’S Sb 375 And Oregon’S Sb 1059 Models For Climate-Change Mitigation?, Keith Bartholomew, David Proffitt

TREC Final Reports

California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act (SB 375) and the Oregon Sustainable Transportation Initiative (SB 1059) have made them the first states in the nation to try and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using the transportation-planning process. Evaluating how these pioneering laws have changed local planning processes – as well as plans themselves – in each state provides insight into the laws’ effectiveness at changing development patterns in a way that reduces GHG emissions, without waiting decades to see the effects in the built environment. Both states’ laws require metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and the municipalities that comprise them …

Using The Planning Process To Mitigate Climate Change, Keith Bartholomew

TREC Project Briefs

This research evaluates how Oregon’s SB 1059 and California’s SB 375 have integrated climate change mitigation strategies into local planning processes, and seeks to understand how transportation planning can help slow climate change.

A New Vision For Timber City Usa, Kerry Politzer

Metroscape

A look at the city of Willamina, Oregon, as it attempts to transition from a timber-reliant town to a sustainable future. Provides a brief history of the community and its economic struggles, and its attempts to foster economic development though tourism, arts and winemaking.

What Do We Know About Location Affordability In U.S. Shrinking Cities?, Joanna Ganning, Jenna Rosie Tighe

TREC Final Reports

In late 2013, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched the Location Affordability Index (LAI) portal. Their dataset uses models to estimate typical amount households spend on housing and transportation at the block group level, and calculates “H + T Affordability,” the percent of household income spent on these items. In our previous research, we analyzed 81 shrinking cities to determine how location affordability differs across various neighborhoods. Our results suggest that households in declining neighborhoods, as compared to stable or redeveloping neighborhoods, face the greatest H + T affordability challenges in shrinking cities. Furthermore, in declining neighborhoods, …

Planning Ahead For Livable Communities Along The Powell-Division Brt: Neighborhood Conditions And Change, Lisa K. Bates, Aaron Golub, Devin Macarthur, Seyoung Sung

TREC Final Reports

New transit investments can be a double-edged sword for disadvantaged communities (e.g., those included in environmental justice and Title VI protected classes). Transit investments improve communities’ mobility and access, and may improve health with reduced driving. However, there is also the potential for transit-oriented development (TOD) to spur gentrification and displacement if affordable housing is lost. Understanding transit corridor conditions and change with new infrastructure is important for learning how to mitigate negative effects and support inclusive communities with access to transit for lower-income households. The planning of a new bus rapid transit line along the Powell-Division corridor in Portland-Gresham …

Considering Health In Us Metropolitan Long-Range Transportation Plans: A Review Of Guidance Statements And Performance Measures, Patrick A. Singleton, Kelly J. Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Transportation influences health primarily and most directly through traffic safety, air quality, physical activity, and accessibility. Despite the importance of all four components, only safety and air quality are typically considered during institutionalized transportation planning processes. This paper assesses how health impacts are considered in transportation planning by focusing on the long-range transportation plans that US metropolitan planning organizations develop. We analyzed the content of current plans from 25 large regions, reviewing how policy guidance statements and supporting performance measures addressed health. Goals and objectives exhibited an incomplete perspective of transportation's effects on health, focusing on safety, accessibility, and air …

Why Do People Volunteer In Free Clinics?, Lucas A. Bennington

University Honors Theses

Even with the affordable healthcare act, as of May 2014, 13.4% of US adults do not have healthcare coverage. In addition to this, of the 7 million illegal immigrants, more than half do not have health insurance. These two numbers mean that there are millions who rely on free health care in order to take care of themselves. Though some doctors take on patients "pro-bono," the majority of these people are treated in free clinics often staffed by volunteers. The need for volunteers in these free clinics is well known, but what motivates these volunteers to give their time? This …