Digital Commons Network^™

An Exploration Of Holistic Admissions Protocol In Graduate School: Implications For Access And Equity, Kelly Doherty

Dissertations and Theses

Historically, graduate admissions policies at higher education institutions have heavily relied on standardized testing, which limits access to graduate and professional degrees for underrepresented demographic and gender groups. Recently, movements toward holistic graduate admissions processes and strengths-based evaluations of applicants have shown promise in equitably recruiting and admitting candidates. However, the field currently lacks common best practices and strategies for enhancing equity in the evaluation of applicant credentials. Furthermore, recent federal challenges to campus diversity and inclusion efforts have complicated these initiatives. To address these issues, this qualitative comparative case study examined five university graduate schools that are implementing holistic …

Managing Happiness In The Mexican Maquiladora Industry: A Turnover Management Challenge, Claudia M. Burgos Cruz, Reyna Virginia Barragan Quintero, Angel Contreras Cruz

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study explores a turnover management case by implementing exploratory Human-Centered Design (HCD) strategies, combining a collaborative tool in a Mexican maquiladora in Tecate, Baja California. To reduce turnover, the tool was designed, prototyped, and tested to foster the emotional well-being of employees, enhance employee engagement, and promote a sense of belonging in the workplace. The company leaders and managers were trained to use the HCD prototypes, such as the Happiness Dashboard, a visual feedback system using emojis to collect data during regular shifts, and the Gemba Walks, a method for collecting information through observing and interacting with workers. Organizational …

Essential Knowledge For Serving Bilingual Youth: The Perspectives Of Adult Former English Learners, Maneka Deanna Brooks

Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study, framed by dignity-focused language policy and intersectional anti-adultism, investigates how 74 adults misclassified as English learners (ELs) during U.S. K-12 education conceptualize essential knowledge for educating bilingual students. Through semi-structured interviews, participants stressed two key areas for schools that serve bilingual students: recognizing students’ nuanced linguistic histories and acknowledging students as education partners. The findings emphasize centering impacted individuals’ perspectives, advocating for eliminating racial bias in EL policy implementation, and addressing institutionalized adultism in EL policy. Implications include the need for professional learning, policy, and practices prioritizing EL youths’ perspectives.

"Significant Bodily Intrusions": Investigations Into Law Enforcement Phlebotomy, Anne Kathleen Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

This three-paper dissertation explores law enforcement phlebotomy, the ability of law enforcement officers to draw blood. Phlebotomy is both a ubiquitous, invasive diagnostic tool as well as a social site with complex relational dynamics at play between phlebotomist and patient. Through law enforcement phlebotomy, the blood draw is co-opted from the medical field into the policing field, and the normative framework through which it is used changes: whereas medical edicts instruct providers to work with patients through an ethics of care--respecting consent and refusal--policing is not similarly bound, instead operating through a prioritization of security and efficiency. In the articles …

Overt Representation And Subtle Clues A Study Of Queer Book Descriptions In English, Croatian, And Serbian, Rachael Phillips

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Most commonly, a book description is the first contact one has with the contents of a book. It is the elevator pitch on the back of the book or the Amazon page that tries to sell you your next read among literally millions of competitors. In book publishing terms, a book description is a piece of metadata that follows the book throughout its marketing life. It is usually a one to three paragraph description of the book, including the setting, main characters, and some (spoiler-free) plot summary, but also usually includes themes and tone, comparative titles, and potentially author background …

Comparing Mentored Research Experiences For Undergraduates Across Institutional Contexts, Jazzmine K. Waugh, Sanya M. Surya, Mackenzie Gray, Thomas E. Keller

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Mentored undergraduate research experiences (UREs) can play a critical role in developing science identity and skills, especially for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. This study investigates science identity and responsibility for scientific roles among scholars in a program aiming to diversify the biomedical workforce. Scholars were placed in UREs at either their home institution (a minority-serving institution [MSI]) or at a research-intensive medical institution with a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). Methods: We analyze data from surveys administered annually to the scholars. We first compare changes in science identity for scholars placed at the MSI and the CTSA …

When My Intersecting Identities Of Being Racially Oppressed And Privileged Become Blurred: An Autoethnographic Dive Into Unlocking The Polarities Of Who I Am, Susan Acosta

Dissertations and Theses

Freire argued that each person is, at times, both the oppressor and the oppressed. He posited that the path to liberation is increased critical consciousness, problematizing our circumstances, and finding ways to take action. As a person from the global majority (PGM), this autoethnography incorporates my personal narratives, communication with colleagues, photo observations, and professional writings that problematizes and examines ways I have been both complicit in, or have been victimized by, racialized oppression, particularly in educational settings. I've had an increasingly keen sense of awareness toward my own racialized tensions when interacting with individuals, in groups, or with an …

Entheogens: The Hallucinogenic Plants That Shaped Religion, Nicolas A. Michaud

Young Historians Conference

Entheogens have played a pivotal role in religious and spiritual practices across diverse cultures, aiding in the pursuit of divine connection and higher consciousness. Evidence suggests that dating as far as back as a million years ago, early human species such as Homo erectus and Homo habilis experimented with hallucinogenic plants like psilocybin mushrooms, introducing the earliest forms of shamanic practices. As societies became more structured, the use of entheogens expanded throughout various parts of society. In ancient Greece, oracles utilized plants like henbane to communicate with the divine, molding military and political policy. During the Middle Ages, Tibetan Buddhism …

Exposing The Truth Behind The Stanford Prison Experiment, Leo Novack

Young Historians Conference

In 1971 Philiip Zimbardo, a Stanford University professor, designed an experiment to study human behaviors in the prison system. He sought to understand the effectiveness of the prison system, however, the experiment ended early due to the ethical concerns toward participants. It is considered one of the most important psychological experiments, not for what it helped reform, but for what it pointed out about the importance of safety for research participants. Calling upon primary sources from participants and the researchers’ findings, as well as secondary sources primarily from psychologists and research ethics, the research reveals that this study was unreliable …

A Crucial Western Foothold: Uyghur-Americans In The Fairfax-D.C. Metro Area, Jake C. Mccauley

Young Historians Conference

Since the 1980s, the Uyghur people of East Turkestan, now known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, have migrated from their ancestral homeland in China in search of a better life. As an ethnically, linguistically, and religiously distinct group, the Uyghurs face severe oppression, with the Chinese state targeting them economically, socially, and physically. Since 2017, mass internment efforts have escalated, leading to the establishment of labor camps that claim to transition Uyghur labor from agricultural to industrial sectors but also serve as sites of ideological indoctrination, torture, and death. As a result of these human rights violations and other …

Guidelines For A Good Life: How Morality Tales Have Shaped Communities And Cultural Landscapes, Kate E. Mcfarland

Young Historians Conference

Morality tales have played a crucial role in shaping moral and political structures throughout history. These stories, varying in format from plays, to books, to even musical albums, are easily accessible to readers. They use simple language and terms that can be understood between social classes and strata to teach people how to live a more “moral” life. This paper studies the socio-political effects of these morality tales through in-depth analyses of the Greek Aesop’s Fables, Confucius’ the Analects, the Indian Panchatantra, the medieval play Everyman, and a modern American musical album “Free to Be… You …

“Through Science To Justice” Magnus Hirschfeld’S Role In Queer Liberation, Katarina L. Stoll

Young Historians Conference

Magnus Hirschfeld was a scientist who researched sexuality and gender, as well as an activist for “sexual minorities.” He challenged previously held beliefs that homosexuality should be treated as an illness and is credited with being the first to view gender identity as separate from sexuality. Additionally, Hirschfeld argued that queer people simply act in accordance with their nature. Through the creation of various institutions, he worked to uplift the queer community through publishing his research, undertaking advocacy work, and creating safe spaces. Though not immune to the prejudices of his time, Hirschfeld was able to help improve the lives …

Face Value: Cosmetics As A Unit Of Historical Analysis, Sophie Durocher

Young Historians Conference

Cosmetics are a universal concept that have been inherent in society all throughout history. This paper explores four unique cultures from across the globe and their primary cosmetic of choice. A tube of lipstick from a Bronze Age Persian burial ground sheds light on the early uses and significance of lipstick in Ancient Persia. A compact of powdered pearls from China in the 11th century reveals the widespread importance of facial powder in China. The Maya applied paint and perfumes to denote social status and in ritual traditions, as evidenced by artwork and archaeological evidence. Ancient Egyptians famously painted their …

Teaching From Past Example: Various Interpretations Of Livy's Rape Of Lucretia, June Baeck

Young Historians Conference

The final kings of Rome were expelled in 509 B.C.E. after one of their princes raped a woman, driving her to end her own life. Pure and chaste, this woman was the utmost model of feminine virtue. Her death would bring great political change at the end of the sixth century B.C.E., but her story would be carried on and projected to provoke something similar for millennia. One significant driver of this was Titus Livius, who wrote of her in the first book of his Ab Urbe Condita, a history of Rome written c. 29 B.C.E. His account showcased …

Reflecting Life Back: The Influence Of Mirrors On Human World History, Helen F. Cruz-Uribe Bandstra

Young Historians Conference

Ten thousand years ago, humans first created mirrors. They were developed simultaneously all over the world, reflecting the innate human desire to see something so close to us, yet so hard to view. Our own face. While this invention had a simple initial purpose, it quickly became tied to many of the more complicated developments of human life, including, but not limited to, religion, power, and technology. We see this reflected in everything from the polished obsidian mirrors of Mesoamerica, used to commune with the gods and revered for their reflectiveness, to the bronze mirrors of Greece used in early …

The Color Of Society: A History Of Textile Dyes, Tess L. Nestel

Young Historians Conference

This paper will examine how textile dyes have been linked to cultural status and hierarchy throughout history. The colors of clothing have long served as outward expressions of wealth and power due to the rarity of natural dyes. With a limited range of colors, each hue became symbolic and took on specific meanings. In China, a strict color code was enforced, with the emperor wearing the most important color; in the Byzantine Empire tyrian purple became the hallmark of royalty and power. Beginning in the 15th century, colonization opened up extensive trade routes that introduced American cochineal and created a …

Form Follows Function: An Analysis Of De Architectura And Its Influence, Weston Klein

Young Historians Conference

Over 2000 years ago, the Roman architect and engineer, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, scribed De Architectura, a multi-volume work unearthed in the 15th century, in St. Gallen, Switzerland. As the only surviving architectural source from antiquity, the book has been indispensable in the study of Greco-Roman architecture, positioning Vitruvian and Greco-Roman architectural concepts in many ways as one in the same. Additionally, Vitruvian ideas, as expressed in De Architectura, regarding architectural form, materials, location, and process have been foundational to the evolution of Western architecture. This paper explores De Architectura’s impact on Western architectural theory and practice spanning the Early Middle …

35th Annual Young Historians Conference Program, Portland State University History Department, Portland State University Challenge Program

Young Historians Conference

This is the 2025 Young Historians Conference schedule and abstracts.

Seeking Common Ground With A Conversational Chatbot, Judit Dombi, Tetyana Sydorenko, Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Conversational AI is advancing rapidly, enabling significant improvements in chatbots’ conversational abilities. Currently, available conversational chatbots (e.g., Snapchat’s MyAI) appear to generate fairly realistic, often human-like output. As collaboration between humans and machines becomes more common, and AI systems are increasingly viewed as more than just tools, understanding human communication in such contexts is crucial. Despite the vast array of applications and the increasing number of human-bot interactions, research on how humans interact with conversational chatbots is scarce. One possible reason for this gap is that studying human-computer communication may require adaptations of existing pragmatic frameworks, due to the unique …

Do Gun-Purchase Waiting Periods Save Lives?, Grace E. Arnold, Mitchell Blaine Priestley

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We study the impact of gun-purchase waiting periods on suicide rates using county-level mortality data from 1991-2019. We find that waiting periods are associated with a reduction in both firearm and overall suicide rates of approximately 5% and 2%, respectively. Novelly, we find that counties that are within 50 miles from a state without a waiting period experience no statistically significant reduction in suicides. Our findings reveal that the decrease in suicides under a waiting period is driven by counties that are more than 50 miles from a non-restricted neighboring state.

The Effects Of School Safety Strategies On K-12 Schools: Armed Civilians, School Resource Officers, And Metal Detectors As Contributors To The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Rebeca Petean

Dissertations and Theses

In recent decades, K-12 public schools have introduced get-tough measures ostensibly to improve school safety through punitive responses to misconduct and delinquency--expanding from traditional security measures to more punitive, zero-tolerance policies and surveillance-based approaches. Academic literature and media accounts highlight that such efforts continue to proliferate and extend across our nation's school spaces. This three-paper dissertation examines how specific safety practices--namely, the presence of armed civilians, School Resource Officers (SROs), and random metal detector checks--influence student outcomes and contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. Rooted in Becker's (1963) and Lemert's (1967) labeling theory, as well as Sampson and Laub's (1997) cumulative …

Rupert Raj’S Written Acts Of Activism And Care Throughout The 1980s And 1990s, Mia Jakobsen

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

In researching acts of activism and care in Canadian queer and trans racialized history, I examined how Rupert Raj advocated and cared for other trans individuals through his writing in the 1980s and 1990s. He noticed that there were few publications for trans individuals so he created easily accessible methods to share vital information regarding research and support that would have otherwise been difficult to acquire. Raj’s writings shared vital transgender research, literature, and expertise from across the globe. He provided critical support to and for other trans men through his easily accessible publications and letters, serving as an information …

Inciting Action By Analyzing Pachirat, Rhi N. Soto

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

The book Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight by Timothy Pachirat explores “the politics of sight”, or the intentional invisibilizing or transparentizing of repugnant acts in order to encourage or limit them, through the case study of a beef slaughter house in Omaha, NE. While also utilizing the politics of sight, Pachirat hopes for great political and social change concerning the immoral acts that happen at meat plants through a radical act of transparency: a narrative ethnography. Writers with similar goals of great change in social and political issues can make use of Pachirat’s techniques, which …

"I Know Who I Am": Draw-And-Tell Conversations With Gender-Creative Children, Eline Leemans Lenne

Dissertations and Theses

A growing number of children identify in various gender-creative ways, likely due to broader social awareness and affirmation of transgenderism. Gender-creative children face higher risks for adverse social, academic, mental health, and healthcare outcomes compared to non-transgender peers. Support from loved ones along with guidance from pediatric providers can mitigate poor outcomes and ensure that gender-creative children live healthy and happy lives. Young gender-creative children's perspectives about the aforementioned topics are markedly absent from the literature, which instead highlights adolescent and adult proxy perspectives.

In this participatory arts-based study anchored by a constructivist epistemology and informed by post-structuralist, queer, and …

Pathos, Spring 2025, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Adriana Stanzione

An Equitable End: Meeting The Needs Of Queer Families Within Deathcare, Nyssa Peck

University Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to explore end-of-life care experiences of queer families, focusing on interactions with palliative and hospice caregivers. Currently, end-of-life (EOL) practitioners in institutional and medical care settings are often poorly equipped to interact with queer families due to inadequate cultural training models, personal biases, and ignorance regarding the queer identities of their clients. This manifests in substantial inequities within deathcare systems regarding the accommodation of the unique needs of queer familial structures. Drawing upon multidisciplinary scholarship, I sought to examine these needs, which diverge from that of heterosexual families due to queer families’ absence of legal protections and …

Improved Biomass Cookstove Use In The Longer Run: Results From A Field Experiment In Rural Ethiopia, Alemu Mekonnen, Abebe D. Beyene, Sahan Dissanayake, Randall Bluffstone, Zenebe Gebreegziabher, Daniel Lafave, Peter Martinsson, Michael Toman

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study examines longer-run usage frequency of Mirt improved biomass cookstoves (ICS), one of the most important ICS promoted in Ethiopia. Mirt has been shown to improve childhood health, and reduce fuelwood consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, but to generate those benefits, households must regularly use it over extended periods. Thus, this paper focuses on longer-run use using stove surface temperature data over five time intervals. We find that, close to its estimated lifespan, 63 per cent of households had their stoves in place after more than 3.5 years. Of those who abandoned their stoves, over 80 per cent did …

Beyond The Bickering: Examining Event, Victim, And Offender Characteristics For Sibling Abuse Incidents In Oregon, Isabella M. Starr

University Honors Theses

Sibling violence (SV) is the most prevalent form of intrafamilial and domestic violence, yet it remains underrecognized and lacks the systematic attention given to other forms of family violence. Often minimized or misclassified as typical sibling rivalry, SV can inflict serious and lasting physical, emotional, and psychological harm on its victims. This study explores the characteristics of sibling violence incidents reported to law enforcement in Oregon between 2016 and 2023, using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Through an analysis of 5,793 single-victim, single-offender incidents, the research examines demographic patterns among victims and offenders, incident dynamics, and typological …

Digital Child Labor Exploitation In Sharenting: Proposing Legislative Solutions For Enhanced Child Protection, Joana Guzman Gonzalez

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores the implications of sharenting -- the practice of sharing children's information on mass media--raises urgent concerns about child safety and potential human rights violations -- and the exploitation of children in digital spaces, focusing on the risks of privacy, safety and mental health pose by the rise of kidfluencers – children influencers under the age of 18 – and family vlog channels. Through a comprehensive literature review, the research examines children's online presence's emotional, legal, and societal impacts, drawing from case studies such as Sheri Franke, Wren Eleanor, Ryan Kaji, and JoJo Siwa. The analysis reveals a …

Disrupting The Abuse-Prison Nexus: The Gendered Violence Of Prosecution And Abolitionist Feminist Approaches To Social Care Work, Sid P. Jordan, Emily Thuma, Aylaliyah Assefa Birru, Deirdre Wilson, Romarilyn Ralston, Norma Cumpian, Joseph Hankins

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

The vast majority of people in U.S. women’s prisons are survivors of interpersonal violence, a pattern that organizers and advocates have referred to as the abuse-to-prison pipeline. This article critically examines criminal prosecution from the perspectives of survivors of interpersonal violence who faced long prison sentences in California. In-depth interviews and group discussions were generated through a participatory process at a gathering to launch the University of California Sentencing Project, a partnership with the community-based organization California Coalition for Women Prisoners. The twenty-two formerly incarcerated participants had collectively spent more than 300 years imprisoned. Drawing on their lived experiences spanning …