Digital Commons Network^™

De Aquí, Y De Allá: Education, Culture, And Identity Development Of Transnational Latinas, Elizabeth Harris-Medina

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

De Aquí, y De Allá: Education, Culture, and Identity Development of Transnational Latinas This ethnographic case study examines the experiences of three transnational Latina women, descendants of families from Degollado, Jalisco, Mexico, exploring how their migration history and educational backgrounds influence their life trajectories. Focusing on these three women, the study aims to better understand their challenges and inform the development of resources to support their success in the U.S. education system. Using ethnographic interviews and Ecological Systems Theory, the research highlights how places and social systems shape views and life paths, offering insights into how best to support these …

Increasing Expectations For Entry: Analyzing Changes In Labor Market Entry-Level Education Requirements Over Time With Potential Implications For Credential Or Degree Inflation And Returns-To-Education, William Nicholas Grinstead

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The dissertation asks the following question: Have occupations increased academic degree requirements over time?

The literature review provides background on the origin and criticisms of the concept of a “knowledge economy.” It addresses economic “signaling theory” and sociologic “credentialism.”

The methodology relies on a trend analysis using the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook and the occupations’ Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system and its predecessor the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). In order to address whether occupations have increased academic degree requirements over time, this dissertation will compare entry-level education requirements for BLS SOC occupations that today are …

Improving Field Education For Social Work In Vietnam: Intern Supervisors’ Perspectives Of The Current State And Potential Solutions, Megan Aikawa, Meekyung Han, Trang T. Nguyen, Linh Dinh, Minh Thanh Bui

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Research has identified challenges associated with the implementation of competency-based social work field education in Vietnam. However, there is limited information available from intern supervisors, who have unique perspectives at the crux of social work training and service delivery. An exploratory phenomenological qualitative approach was used to explore their experiences and perceptions through online interviews. Four categories were identified: diverse implementation of a common framework, rudimentary expectations and activities, challenges to implementation, and opportunities for improvement. These findings suggest that a multidimensional approach is needed, including improved collaborations between field agencies and universities to empower students, intern supervisors, and faculty.

The Role Of Intersectionality In Research On Teachers Of Color And Indigenous Teachers, Saili S. Kulkarni, Tanja Burkhard, David J. Johns

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This paper emphasizes the complexity and criticality of intersectionality in understanding the research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (TOCIT). Cho and colleagues (2013) identified three dimensions of intersectional dialogues: how intersectionality has been used in research and teaching, how it has been used as a theory and methodology, and how it has been used in community organizations. As Cho and colleagues noted, what intersectionality does in theory is equally as important as what it does in practice. Therefore, we drew from the recently published Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers to highlight how intersectionality …

True Grit: Exploring Nonprofit Sector Resilience Following Economic Recessions, Xintong Chen, Kerry Kuenzi, Lindsey Evans, Amanda Stewart

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The nonprofit sector has been portrayed as resilient, describing a sector that persists despite challenges. We investigate nonprofit resiliency by examining how organizational characteristics, strategies, and community factors equipped organizations to recover following economic recessions. Utilizing a fixed effects panel regression model, our study covers a period of 29 years (1989–2018), encompassing three economic crises in the United States. The primary focus is examining the sector’s financial health and the resilience of the constituent organizations. Our findings describe a sector buoyed by the resilience of larger and older organizations, earned revenue, and contribution revenue, as well as the role of …

Is Knowledge Management (Finally) Extractive? – Fuller’S Argument Revisited In The Age Of Ai, Norman Mooradian

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Aim/Purpose The rise of modern artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, machine learning (ML), has provided new opportunities and directions for knowledge management (KM). A central question for the future of KM is whether it will be dominated by an automation strategy that replaces knowledge work or whether it will support a knowledge-enablement strategy that enhances knowledge work and uplifts knowledge workers. This paper addresses this question by re-examining and updating a critical argument against KM by the sociologist of science Steve Fuller (2002), who held that KM was extractive and exploitative from its origins. Background This paper re-examines Fuller’s argument …

Opening The Black Box: Carbon-Footprint Calculators, Meat Consumption, And The “Wicked Problem” Of Metric Governance, E. Melanie Dupuis, Dustin Mulvaney

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Carbon-footprint calculators are widely used as communication and education tools, designed to make people aware of the ways their personal actions contribute to greenhouse-gas emissions. However, they have come under criticism for emphasizing individual behavior versus structural change. We extend this critique to argue that carbon-footprint calculators are a form of “metric governance” that not only disciplines users but also constrains their abilities to engage with the complexities of climate change and social action. We focus on a particularly wicked problem of carbon-metric governance: livestock greenhouse-gas emissions. We show that carbon-footprint calculators black box and fix the complex politics and …

Access To Justice For Black Inventors, Jordana R. Goodman, Khamal Patterson

Vanderbilt Law Review

To receive a patent, an inventor must meet certain inventive and procedural standards. Their invention must be novel, nonobvious, and written in such a way that any person skilled in the inventive subject can make and use the invention without undue experimentation. This process is far from objective.

An inventor is not always communicating within their own social circle. An inventor is required to communicate their invention so that a patent examiner believes a person having ordinary skill in the art ("PHOSITA") would recognize the invention as nonobvious. Moreover, a fictitious skilled person must be able to make and use …

Examining The Multifaceted Impacts Of Drug Decriminalization On Public Safety, Law Enforcement, And Prosecutorial Discretion, Kelsey S. Henderson, Christopher M. Campbell, Brian C. Renauer

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

This final report provides the findings of a multi-year project to understand the effects of successive drug policy efforts in Oregon. Since 2013, Oregon has implemented three changes that reclassified and lowered the seriousness of low-level drug possession offenses, with multiple years between each policy change: Justice Reinvestment in 2013, defelonization in 2017, and decriminalization in 2021. This project parses out the individual impacts of these unique events on law enforcement, prosecution, courts and sentencing, and public safety & health.

Ownership Topology Of Vertically-Scaled Agile, William Dabney

Theses

Much as Scrum, Kanban, and XP are used to structure team-level agility, those wishing to take agility beyond the team level often turn to proven solutions. The most popular, which aim to scale development by adding teams under a shared collective ownership rather than separating them into discrete units, are the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), and Nexus. These frameworks advocate for aligning ownership subdivisions along features rather than code, which allows teams working on the same product to do so autonomously. While the benefits of this have been researched, the topology of ownership in these frameworks …

Families At The Center: Leading For Home Visiting Systems Change, Callie H. Lambarth, Beth L. Green, Center For Coordinating Oregon Home Visiting Systems

Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services Publications

The Center for Coordinating Oregon Home Visiting Systems (CCOHVS) launched in February 2024 at the Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services at Portland State University. The CCOHVS functions as a program-neutral backbone organization for a coordinated system of prenatal and early childhood home visiting services. Its work will move the state closer to the vision described in the Raise Up Oregon 2.0 (RUO) strategic plan1 for early childhood systems, namely to create “equitable, integrated, accessible, inclusive, anti-racist and family-centered” early learning services, with a focus on ensuring this system meets the needs of pregnant people and families with …

Relationship Between Clinical Measures Of Hearing And Clinical Measures Of Vestibular Function, Helen S Cohen, Haleh Sangi-Haghpeykar, J Connor Sullivan, Nathan Silver, Liam D Ferreira, Jen Li Dong, Alex D Sweeney, Angela S Peng

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

PURPOSE: Patients often have basic audiometry (BA) but not objective diagnostic tests of the vestibular system (VNG) when complaining of symptoms of a vestibular disorder. The relationship of BA results to VNG results is unknown. This study sought to determine if BA scores are related to impaired VNG scores.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We reviewed electronic medical records at a tertiary care center, for patients seen between 2015 and 2021 who had had both a BA and a VNG (n = 651). BA subtests were pure tone averages, word recognition, and tympanogram. VNG subtests were cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials, Dix-Hallpike …

Race, Ethnicity, Language, And The Treatment Of Low-Risk Febrile Infants, Colleen K Gutman, Paul L Aronson, Nidhi V Singh, Michelle L Pickett, Kamali Bouvay, Rebecca S Green, Britta Roach, Hannah Kotler, Jessica L Chow, Emily A Hartford, Mark Hincapie, Ryan St Pierre-Hetz, Jessica Kelly, Laura Sartori, Jennifer A Hoffmann, Jacqueline B Corboy, Kelly R Bergmann, Bolanle Akinsola, Vanessa Ford, Natalie J Tedford, Theresa T Tran, Sasha Gifford, Amy D Thompson, Andrew Krack, Mary Jane Piroutek, Samantha Lucrezia, Sunhee Chung, Nabila Chowdhury, Kathleen Jackson, Tabitha Cheng, Christian D Pulcini, Nirupama Kannikeswaran, Larissa L Truschel, Karen Lin, Jamie Chu, Neh D Molyneaux, Myto Duong, Leslie Dingeldein, Jerri A Rose, Carly Theiler, Sonali Bhalodkar, Emily Powers, Muhammad Waseem, Ahmed Lababidi, Xinyu Yan, Xiang-Yang Lou, Rosemarie Fernandez, K Casey Lion

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

IMPORTANCE: Febrile infants at low risk of invasive bacterial infections are unlikely to benefit from lumbar puncture, antibiotics, or hospitalization, yet these are commonly performed. It is not known if there are differences in management by race, ethnicity, or language.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate associations between race, ethnicity, and language and additional interventions (lumbar puncture, empirical antibiotics, and hospitalization) in well-appearing febrile infants at low risk of invasive bacterial infection.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This was a multicenter retrospective cross-sectional analysis of infants receiving emergency department care between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2019. Data were analyzed from December 2022 …

The Impact Of Race On Pancreatic Cancer Treatment And Survival In The Nationwide Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, Natalia Khalaf, Ann Xu, Theresa Nguyen Wenker, Jennifer R Kramer, Yan Liu, Hardeep Singh, Hashem B El-Serag, Fasiha Kanwal

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

OBJECTIVES: Among patients with pancreatic cancer, studies show racial disparities at multiple steps of the cancer care pathway. Access to healthcare is a frequently cited cause of these disparities. It remains unclear if racial disparities exist in an integrated, equal access public system such as the Veterans Affairs healthcare system.

METHODS: We identified all patients diagnosed with pancreatic adenocarcinoma in the national Veterans Affairs Central Cancer Registry from January 2010 to December 2018. We examined the independent association between race and 3 endpoints: stage at diagnosis, receipt of treatment, and survival while adjusting for sociodemographic factors and medical comorbidities.

RESULTS: …

Insights From Social Media Into Public Perspectives On Investigative Genetic Genealogy, Sara Huston, Diana Madden, Andrea Villanes, Nathan Reed, Whitney Bash Brooks, Christopher Healey, Christi Guerrini

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Social media sites like X (formerly Twitter) increasingly serve as spaces for the public to discuss controversial topics. Social media can spark extreme viewpoints and spread biased or inaccurate information while simultaneously allowing for debate around policy-relevant topics. The arrest of Joseph J. DeAngelo in April 2018 ignited a barrage of social media conversations on how DNA and genetic genealogy led to the suspect. These conversations continued over the following years as policies changed and as the use of the approach expanded. We examined social media coverage of investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) to characterize the volume and temporal patterns in …

Critical Dialogue And Capacity-Building Projects Reduced Alcohol And Substance Use In A Randomized Clinical Trial Among Formerly Incarcerated Men, Liliane Cambraia Windsor, Ellen Benoit, Carol Lee, Alexis Jemal, Kari Kugler, Douglas C Smith, Rogério M Pinto, Salma Musaad

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background:

Rates of alcohol and/or substance use (ASU) among residents of predominantly Black and marginalized communities are similar to ASU rates in White communities. Yet ASU has worse consequences in predominantly Black and marginalized communities (e.g., higher incarceration).

Objective:

We randomized participants to one of 16 intervention conditions using a 2⁴ full factorial design to optimize a multilevel intervention reducing ASU among 602 formerly incarcerated men with substance-use-disorders (SUD). Candidate intervention components included (1) critical dialogue (CD; six weekly 2-hour-long group sessions vs. no CD sessions), (2) Quality of Life Wheel (QLW; six weekly 1-hour-long group sessions vs. no …

Understanding Prescribing Practices And Patient Experiences With Renin Angiotensin System Inhibitors Use In Chronic Kidney Disease: A Qualitative Study, Jennifer Arney, L Parker Gregg, Sheena Wydermyer, Michael A Herrera, Peter A Richardson, Michael E Matheny, Julia M Akeroyd, Glenn T Gobbel, Adriana Hung, Salim S Virani, Sankar D Navaneethan

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Introduction: Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) improve outcomes but are underutilized in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Little is known about reasons for discontinuation and lack of reinitiating these medications. We aimed to explore clinicians' and patients' experiences and perceptions of ACEI/ARB use in CKD.

Methods: A multi-profession sample of health care clinicians and patients with documented ACEI/ARB-associated side effects in the past 6 months. Participants were recruited from 2 Veterans Affairs healthcare systems in Texas and Tennessee. A total of 15 clinicians and 10 patients completed interviews. We used inductive and deductive qualitative data …

It’S About Time, Part Ii: Does Time Poverty Contribute To Inequitable College Outcomes By Gender And Race/Ethnicity?, Claire Wladis, Alyse C. Hachey, Katherine M. Conway

Publications and Research

Existing research demonstrates gender- and race/ethnicity-based inequities in college outcomes. Separately, recent research suggests a relationship between time poverty and college outcomes for student parents and online students. However, to date, no studies have empirically explored whether differential access to time as a resource for college may explain differential outcomes by gender or race/ethnicity. To address this, this study explored the relationship between time poverty, gender or race/ethnicity, and college outcomes at a large urban public university with two and four year campuses. Time poverty explained a significant proportion of differential outcomes (retention and credit accumulation) by gender and race/ethnicity. …

Assembling Hyperpop: Genre Formation On Wikipedia, Eliot Bates, Sophie Delphis, Romulo Moraes, Julia Santoli

Publications and Research

In this article, we analyze how a music genre is reciprocally defined online, through the crowdsourced ‘facts’ of Wikipedia. What are the traditional implicit and explicit exclusionary practices in this sort of genre formation? And how can internet-specific sociabilities create new exclusionary practices in the process of defining music? By analyzing the edit history of Wikipedia’s ‘hyperpop’ page, we locate ongoing debates, controversies, and contestations that point to shaping forces around online genre formation. These potentially have a huge impact on how hyperpop is understood both inside and outside of the music community. In locating the most active editors of …

Sharing Stories Of Hope And Transformation In U.S. Higher Education: An Ereader By Portland State University Students, Óscar Fernández, David Peterson Del Mar

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

This eReader showcases stories of hope and transformation written by diverse students enrolled in University Studies courses at Portland State University. The goal is to motivate first-year and transfer students to see that, in higher education, they are not alone in their personal, familial, and academic struggles—and personal, familial, and educational achievements.

American Indian Census Rolls: An Underutilized Source Of Historical Demographic Information On Tribal Populations, David Swanson, Jeff Tayman

Publications, Reports and Presentations

Historical information on tribal populations in the United States is incomplete. American Indians and Alaska Natives were not enumerated with the general population until the 1940 decennial census. However, Indian Census Rolls were produced for the period 1885 – 1940 under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U.S. The information given in the Indian Census Rolls varies but usually includes the roll number, age, gender, tribal identity, and relationship to the head of the family. In this paper, we present background information on Indian Census Rolls and demonstrate how the digitized microfiche census roll schedules can …

Targeted, Harassed, And Displaced: The Role Of Discrimination In Oregon Evictions, Alex Farrington, Natalie J. Cholula, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Drawing on focus groups with 101 Oregon tenants who have experienced an eviction since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this report examines the role that discrimination plays in Oregon evictions. As this is not a legal investigation, we do not focus solely on legally-actionable or provable claims. Rather, we include a wide range of tenants’ descriptions of their experiences with unfair, malicious, or prejudicial treatment. We find that many tenants are specifically targeted for eviction or experience prejudicial treatment during the eviction process because of their identity or background. This includes being treated unfairly based on tenants’ race, language, …

Looking At The Past To Change The Future: Showcasing Featured Collections, Building Communities, And Co-Creating, Sherry Buchanan

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Academic libraries have the opportunity and the responsibility to promote and advance content that creates transformative and iterative learning opportunities. To that end, and in an effort to build communities and facilitate co-creation, Portland State University showcases three main Featured Collections in our open access repository, PDXScholar: Climate Justice, COVID-19, and Racial and Gender Equity, with a fourth pilot collection—Student Work: An Open Showcase of Outstanding Student-Created Research & Creative Work—under development. The collections include a broad range of audiovisual materials, such as podcasts and webinar series, as well as sustainability and equity work, student-created content, and numerous future-focused multidisciplinary …

“Legally Magic” Words: An Empirical Study Of The Accessibility Of Fifth Amendment Rights, Kate Weisburd, Roseanna Sommers

Faculty Scholarship

Fifth Amendment case law (including Miranda v. Arizona) requires that individuals assert their right to counsel or silence using “explicit,” “clear,” and “unambiguous” statements—or, as some dissenting judges have lamented, using “legally magic” words. Through a survey of 1,718 members of the U.S. public, we investigate what ordinary people believe it takes to assert the right to counsel and the right to silence. We then compare their perceptions against prevailing legal standards governing invocation.

With respect to the right to counsel, the survey results indicate that members of the public have a uniformly lower threshold for invocation than do courts. …

Reproducing Inequality: Racial Capitalism And The Cost Of Public Education, Thalia Gonzalez, Paige Joki

Faculty Scholarship

American democracy is marked by an unwavering deployment of racialized economic modalities of fines, fees, and debt aimed at scaffolding hierarchies of white power and prescribing Black people as commodities, not human beings. Over the last two decades, an expanding praxis in the economic justice field has emerged, opposing and disrupting racialized economic logics within a national anti-fine, fee and cost movement. From scholarly discourse to legal interventions and reforms at city- and county-levels, the movement has sought to target interlocking material and ideological forces that comprise racial capitalist geographies across many criminal and civil systems. Despite this significant work, …

Toward A Taxonomy Of Freedom Of Movement Claims: Identifying Rights-Based Pathways For Today’S Refugees Beyond The 1951 Refugee Convention, Moria Paz

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the current migratory crisis as one instance of a conceptual mismatch in human rights between formal law and the tools that courts and other quasi-judicial bodies actually utilize in adjudication. While the doctrine centers around individual right-holders, enforcement bodies provide a remedy only when there is a state duty-holder. Human rights scholarship regarding refugees focuses on the right to freedom of movement. However, this right frequently offers little benefit to these individuals adrift at sea or wandering in the desert.

An alternative framing might ultimately be more effective before human rights courts and other quasi-judicial bodies. This …

Anxieties About The Future: Ecocriticism And Dystopian Landscapes In The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch And Selected Fiction By Philip K. Dick, Nickolas Michael Sykora

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In a literary analysis of selected fiction by Philip K Dick through an ecocritical framework, the focus of this study reveals the consequences of ecological destruction on futuristic societies reflecting the Anthropocene. Drawing correlations between various texts by the author, the separation of nature from humanity demonstrates how dystopian landscapes influence the identity of the characters in these settings and how dystopia serves as a prism which distorts or reflects what it means to be human. With this, ontology and artificial intelligence are analyzed as a notable facet of his literature which addresses the progress of innovation in society and …

How Influential Is Petro-Pedagogy On Federal Educational Guidelines?, Cherrie Amor Chavez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Petro-pedagogy highlights the pervasive influence of the fossil fuel industry within educational frameworks. This phenomenon operates subtly, manifesting in educational content's biases, omissions, and prioritizations. Focused on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this research employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to scrutinize educational directives through a Petro-pedagogical lens. The study aims to unveil the language, power dynamics, and ideological constructs perpetuating fossil-fuel narratives within educational discourse through this lens. The study's significance lies in revealing concealed power structures within environmental and climate change education. The study uses critical discourse analysis to reveal pervasive …

A Post-Colonial Criticism Of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, Kaitlyn R. O'Dell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The representation of Indigenous land-based cosmologies within Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia communicates a real perception of our world through the constructed imaginative society within this speculative fiction novel. Ecotopia is an alternative Pacific West Coast society that counters the dominant United States model in its holistic and green approach. This green society relies heavily on Indigenous ideology but lacks actual Indigenous voices or communities within this white idealized society. This research provides an example of the deconstruction of this popular novel to its main problematic components, establishing why the use of Indigenous beliefs and values can cause negative implications to the …

Characterizing The Beneficial Uses Of The Arcata Marsh Constructed Wetland Treatment System And Wildlife Sanctuary, Andrew S. Wolff

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The Arcata Marsh Constructed Wetland Treatment System and Wildlife Sanctuary, located in Arcata California, has been in operation since 1986. Not only has it served as the wastewater treatment facility for the city, it has also provided other beneficial uses such as acting as a sanctuary for bird, mammal, amphibian, and macroinvertebrate species. With facility upgrades currently underway, it has become important to revisit the beneficial uses of the Arcata Marsh. This project aimed to identify and characterize these beneficial uses. Literature review was conducted, and eleven beneficial uses were identified. Existing and newly obtained data were analyzed to characterize …