Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Gay Marriage Laws In Europe Compared To The United States, Megan Stamm

Honors Theses

The issue of same-sex marriage has been the hot social issue of the decade, even of the generation. This social issue has been debated to and fro in countries around the world. Each country has differing policies towards same-sex marriage. Certain countries in the Middle East hold same-sex relationships as crimes punishable by death. Some countries in Europe hold same-sex marriage as completely equal to heterosexual marriage. Each country is different. Each country is made up of different cultures and this plays a huge role in the debate. This thesis will compare and contrast European countries with the United States …

Use And Potentials Of Counter-Optical Lasers In Riots And Terrorism., Robert J. Bunker

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

This essay in the TRENDS counter-terrorism futures series focuses on LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) effects on human vision and activities in the context of riots and terrorism. Both the use and potentials of counter-optical lasers—that is, lasers utilized so as to disrupt and degrade human vision—will be highlighted with in regard to each of these forms of criminal-political activities. Additionally, a discussion of some of the applicable police and security response (countermeasures) to such laser use will be provided.

Hampton Roads Must Rise To Challenge In Reducing Effects Of Climate Change, Daily Press

News Items

No abstract provided.

Assessing Changes In Safety Net Providers Since The Passage Of The Affordable Care Act, Arlesia Mathis, Julia Burke, Gulzar H. Shah

Health Policy & Management: Faculty Presentations (2008-2022)

The passage of the Affordable Care Act presented opportunities and challenges for safety net providers. Significant investments in provider capacity promised much needed expansion of services; and in 2014, the law extended coverage to millions of previously uninsured Americans. However, safety net providers are concerned that changes to financing brought about by changes in the ACA may threaten their ability to provide services to millions more who still lack insurance. This is a preliminary study of changes occurring with maternal and child health services among safety-net providers.

Use Of Facebook By Local Health Departments: Activity And Focus Areas, Rakhi Trivedi, Gulzar H. Shah

Health Policy & Management: Faculty Presentations (2008-2022)

This presentation was given at the Keeneland Conference for Public Health Systems and Services Research.

Siren Song: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender And Intimate Partner Violence In Gotham City Sirens, Scarlett Schmidt

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This project investigates comic book discourse. Specifically, I investigate how comic narratives provide readers with an interpretation for how they should discern and assess “appropriate” behaviors for women. The artifact of analysis included in this project is DC Comics Gotham City Sirens (2009). This text features popular female superheroes, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy. Because comic books utilize both textual and visual means to disseminate a message, this project evaluates the visual rhetoric of these characters within the narrative. Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm is used to provide an understanding to how these visual means contribute to the meanings assigned …

2nd Place Contest Entry: Treatment Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder In A Veteran Population: Efficacy Of Complementary And Alternative Medicine Therapies, Brooke D. Snelgrove

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Brooke Snelgrove's submission for the 2014-2015 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won second place. She wrote about the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among veterans with Complementary and Alternative Medicine therapies. You can read the final essay that came out of her research here.

2015 Legislative Summary, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

The 90th General Assembly opened its Regular Session on January 12 and recessed on April 9. Meetings of the House and Senate education committees were usually standing room only for discussions of a broad range of bills on early childhood, K-12, and higher education issues. The purpose of this policy brief is to review the K-12 bills that garnered the most attention and have been signed into law by firstterm Governor Asa Hutchinson. These highlights are organized into several categories as shown in This Brief

Dash: The Portland Region's Next-Generation Activity-Based Model, Richard Walker

PSU Transportation Seminars

DASH is the next generation activity based model being developed by the Metro Research Center. Upon completion, it will be one of the most advanced in the nation. This model will be used extensively in estimating the activity and travel response of individuals to policies and infrastructure investments. Compared to past models, it will include enhanced consideration of the socio-economic roles of individuals, discrete temporal dynamics, and intra-household dependencies.

Portland State 20/20 Newsletter, Strategic Planning Development Team, Portland State University. Office Of The President

Newsletters

This newsletter provides updates on the strategic planning process, the work of topic teams, and previews coming activities.

Research Brief: "Post-Sexual Assault Health Care Utilization Among Oef/Oif Servicewomen", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief is about the use of medical and mental health services by servicewomen after sexual assault that occurred while in the military. In policy and practice, servicewomen who have been sexually assaulted should seek medical and mental healthcare in a timely manner, even if they don't believe it is necessary, to prevent HIV infection and pregnancy; the DoD should continue its use of the DoJ's gold standard of care while ensuring that servicewomen feel that they can reach out for post-assault healthcare. Suggestions for future research include sampling more servicewomen who utilize care, expanding the geographic spread of the …

Grading Arkansas’ Schools, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

Report Cards for Arkansas schools released by the Arkansas Department of Education contain valuable information for stakeholders. As in past years, the report cards outline student demographics and academic achievement, as well as rates of attendance, graduation, dropout, grade inflation and college remediation. Report cards also contain information on teacher quality and school environment indicators. There are a few new pieces of information provided this year, specifically a school rating which assigns a letter grade to schools.

The Unfinished Work: Slavery Today, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

2.7 million. That’s an estimate for the number of slaves in the world today. The true number is probably higher, even though the United States abolished slavery 150 years ago. Most of today’s slaves go unseen and unaided, victims of an opaque system of exploitation that conspires to keep them oppressed. [excerpt]

Love In The Age Of Measles: The Anti-Vaccination Movement In America, Seth L. Casey

Student Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this paper is to study the particular brand of anti-intellectualism prevalent in the anti-vaccination movement in the United States. The goal is to understand why some parents choose to ignore scientific consensus and trust the opinion of nonprofessionals. The paper will discuss the American distrust of intellectuals, professionals, and authority figures while focusing on the anti-vaccination movement. Conspiracy theories seems to have replaced rational option evaluation for a significant number of Americans. This must mean that conspiracy theories offer a more appealing answer to the vaccination question than scientific facts. Drawing on Hofstadter's classic Anti-intellectualism in American …

An Outcome Analysis Of The Achievement Of The Five Objectives By The Housing 1000 Care Coordination Project: Ending Homelessness In Santa Clara County Through Affordable Housing, Darren K. Bader

Master's Projects

No abstract provided.

Medicare: Program, Procedures And Recommendations, Sarah Wyman

Honors Theses

My thesis is formatted in the style of a political brief, based upon the program Medicare. This report discusses the question of whether the Medicare program is performing effectively. It discusses the origins and development of Medicare, its mission and reason for the program. Included is the staffing of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a center within the Department of Health and Human Services. It discusses the historical, current, and projected funding through FY 2015. Most notably it contains the program performance ratings of Medicare from the White House, CBO, OMB, and CMS. Medicare is a program that …

A Roadmap For Governance Reforms, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Pakistan has been facing a unique and difficult dilemma for quite some time. Government leaders of the day are unhappy that they are unable to deliver upon the commitments they had made to the electorate at the time of the elections. Policy-Performance Gap is widening every day, Decision making is slow and implementation of decisions almost non-existent. Credibility of each successive government is eroding rapidly among the public at large creating trust deficit in the political leadership. The citizens and society are highly disenchanted and dissatisfied as they are unable to access basic services the state has to provide to …

Can Electronic Health Records Systems Support New Payment Methods For Health Centers?, Peter Shin, Feygele Jacobs, Jeffrey Barnes, James B. Welsh, Lisa Perry, Scott D. Morgan

Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative

This study assessed the feasibility and usefulness of combining electronic health record (EHR) data with federal cost report data for the purposes of: 1) quantifying the provision of enabling services; and 2) for use as the basis of community health center payment rate-setting. The study used EHR data derived from the Center for Primary Care Informatics to isolate enabling services and perform the end-to-end analysis that might be required to develop or evaluate reimbursement rates. The study revealed that data extracted from federal cost reports combined with data from the EHR fall short of providing the information required to reasonably …

Container Houses, Tran Joseph, Anissa Rosbaugh, Sydne Scott, Hanan Yassin

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

We have noticed that there is an increasing number of homeless in our community. People who are homeless have a more difficult time getting jobs, making it harder to for them to get back on their feet.

Homeless is defined as a person without a stable place to live, in risk of being homeless. Homeless under Federal status, is defined as fleeing/attempting to escape domestic violence. Examples of homelessness include couch surfing, sleeping in shelters, and living in a car.

Our proposal was to build homeless shelters out of shipping containers.

Cleaning Up The Cities Of Tomorrow, Miguel Campos, Jack Chen, Alex Gaiovych, Fernando Lauer, Kaleb Swoverland, Anna Velikoretskikh, Jason Yu

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

A huge problem with current modernized and non modernized cities is the amount of trash being thrown away. There is a tremendous amount of recyclable material that is being thrown away with non recyclable waste into massive landfills. Even though we can not physically see the trash that we throw away on the street, it must still go somewhere. Some of that waste is toxic, other waste is made of non decomposable material. These massive waste disposal sites hurt animals, damage soil, and harm the health people living nearby.

In 2007, Americans threw out about 570 billion pounds of municipal …

Smarter Cycling, Cory Koehler, Richard Smith, Sarah St. Clair, Alex Taylor, Aubrey Masten, Konon Phillips

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

With the current trend of urbanization, the populations of major cities such as Portland are steadily increasing. This is causing a variety of problems, both within the city and in rural areas. In regards to the city, the major challenges facing city planners are the need for the expansion of residential neighborhoods and a rise in traffic throughout the city. One way to tackle the issue of an abundance of traffic, is to make alternate means of transportation more appealing to residents. We chose to focus on bicycling because of the bike‐friendly culture already in place in Portland. An increase …

University Of Nebraska Board Of Regents Policies, Contains Amendments Through April 10, 2015, University Of Nebraska Board Of Regents

University of Nebraska Board of Regents: Policies, Acts, and Other Materials

First section:

RP-1.1.1 Direct Responsibilities of the Board Under the constitution and statutes of the State of Nebraska, the Board of Regents has the authority and the responsibility for the general government of the University of Nebraska. It must exercise general supervision over all elements of the University and control and direction of all expenditures and establish the general operating policies of the institution. To assist it in the discharge of its responsibilities, the Board of Regents employs a staff and faculty who have the professional competence to develop and operate the University's programs. The Board delegates, through its Bylaws …

Geometric Design, Speed, And Safety, Richard J. Porter

PSU Transportation Seminars

In this seminar, Dr. Porter will explore the interactions of geometric design decisions, speed, and safety. A performance-based approach to this topic will be considered given the availability of several key documents, including the Highway Safety Manual and TRB's Modeling Operating Speed: Synthesis Report as well as a significant body of published research. A historical look at the design speed concept will show that while the design speed definition has changed on more than one occasion, the same basic but flawed philosophy that relates design speed to a “safe speed” is still reflected in supplemental guidance related to design speed …

Research Brief: "Sexual Assault Training In The Military: Evaluating Efforts To End The “Invisible War”", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This study assesses whether prevention and education by the Department of Defense (DoD) fostered accurate knowledge about sexual assault resources and protocols among active duty personnel, and also how service members perceive the effectiveness of these efforts. Medical professionals and counselors serving sexual assault survivors should offer comprehensive and inclusive treatment, and would benefit from policies that enforce sexual assault prevention and response training which ensures that all service members are provided with the essential training needed to reduce sexual assault. Future research should collect data on the length of military service, which could provide useful information on the breadth …

Appalachian Festival Proposal, Timothy Rainer, Cassie Grate, Callen Thompson, Amy Gadd

Senior Year Experience Student Projects

A proposal to the city of Columbus to hold an Appalachian Festival in Goodale Park to increase awareness of Appalachian culture in the city.

Experiences, Perceived Challenges, And Support Systems Of Early College High School Students, Karen P. Sáenz, Julie P. Combs

Administrative Issues Journal

In this qualitative study, the prior experiences, perceived challenges, and support systems of 17 Grade 12 Hispanic students at an early college high school were explored using the framework of social capital theory. Utilizing Moustakas’s phenomenological design, data were collected using focus group and individuals interviews. Several themes emerged and were related to the conceptual framework of social capital, such as the school environment, support from family and teachers, and the students’ identify and values. Understanding the experiences of the Grade 12 students can provide valuable information for high school and college administrators in an ECHS setting.

Franklinton Healthcare Committee, Devyn Hempy, Logan Peterman, Nicole Kostiuk, Ethan Wojciechowski, Matt Mccollister

Senior Year Experience Student Projects

Franklinton HealthCare Committee proposes to reinvent Mt. Carmel West by creating a new rehabilitation center to fight drug and alcohol addiction, a wellness center to educate Franklinton residents about nutrition and health issues, and a residence hall to support the expansion of the nursing school.

Broadband Access In Arkansas Schools, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

With the computer-based Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) test, the Arkansas Digital Learning Act, and Governor Hutchinson’s efforts to increase participation in computer science courses, the Arkansas Legislature is discussing actions to take in order to close the “digital divide” in the state. This brief will explore the technological requirements of providing the recommended bandwidth to schools, the barriers to the provision of that service, and potential steps for the Arkansas Department of Education to take in order to ensure that every Arkansas student has fast, consistent access to the Internet to support their learning.

Faculty Observables And Self-Reported Responsiveness To Academic Dishonesty, Robert T. Burrus, Jr., Adam T. Jones, William H. Sackley, Michael Walker

Administrative Issues Journal

Prior to 2009, a mid-sized public institution in the southeast had a faculty-driven honor policy characterized by little education about the policy and no tracking of repeat offenders. An updated code, implemented in August of 2009, required that students sign an honor pledge, created a formal student honor board, and developed a process to track and hold accountable, repeat offenders. Self-reported data on faculty vigilance to detect and punish cheating is collected both prior to and after a change in the honor code at a mid-sized public institution in the southeast. We find that, at the time of the first …

Evaluating The Impact Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act’S Btop Program On Broadband Adoption, James Prieger, Janice A. Hauge

School of Public Policy Working Papers

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) spent $4.7B during 2009-2013 to, int. al, increase broadband adoption in underserved communities. We characterize the BTOP grants and examine the impact of the awards on broadband adoption. Econometric specifications controlling for award endogeneity related to observed and unobserved county-level factors find that spending is apparently associated with increased broadband adoption. Further investigation, however, reveals that the impacts of spending are nonlinear and even nonmonotonic over the range of county-level BTOP spending in the data. Controlling for trends to reduce the potential for spurious correlation between spending and outcomes …