Background:
The number of people diagnosed with chronic physical conditions is increasing in the United States. Chronic mental illnesses are also common in the country. Low-income women and those on Medicaid bear a disproportionate burden of chronic conditions and these conditions significantly contribute to obstetric morbidity. Prioritizing preventive measures and...
After the 1996 national welfare reform known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was enacted with more stringent eligibility and work requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, a plethora of analyses have followed assessing the...
The shortage of physicians serving rural communities is well documented. To address the rural shortage, medical schools have developed extracurricular programs, called rural health tracks, with an intent to foster medical students’ interest in serving rural communities. While there has been some research about the effects of these tracks, almost...
Nuclear fuel management is an optimization problem on many levels. Finding “viable” solutions for the core reload design problem is difficult without expert knowledge and software automation. Small modular reactors with a shared used fuel pool demonstrate a novel opportunity for fuel cycle optimization.
A Python package was developed and...
Improving access to and uptake of antenatal care remains a persistent challenge for India. It is a far greater challenge for an underdeveloped, poorer and mostly rural state like Bihar. The 2015-16 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-IV) of India reported that only 3% pregnant women in rural Bihar utilized full...
Background: Calls by presidents and legislators to raise the U.S. college graduation rate to 60% by 2025 have required educational institutions to find ways to increase accessibility and quality while simultaneously reducing costs (Bautsch, 2018; Smith, 2017). Private foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are getting involved...
Diversity and inclusion represent central challenges and opportunities in the transnational field of higher education, as the number of students enrolled in higher education has expanded exponentially over the past century and universal access to tertiary education has emerged as a development imperative. Within this context, diversity has emerged as...
Increasing calls from stakeholders for a greater role in public decision making has led to the rapid world-wide adoption of multi stakeholder collaboration for policymaking. In line with this emerging trend the Government of Nepal with support from its long-time development partners and bi-lateral donors initiated a policy level experiment...
The last decade has seen a drastic interest in microgrids throughout the world. Even though this trend might seem to be just another technological solution in the energy sector, it is a part of a greater transition from a centralized energy system to a more decentralized one. However, unlike most...
Public policy narratives and stories are often referenced by the media, politicians, advocacy groups, and across many disciplines in academia. Studies of social and political narratives support the notion narrative matters, but often lack systematic design capable of producing generalizable findings. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has responded to this...
More than half of students in Washington state community colleges enroll in developmental mathematics, but a relatively small percentage of these students persist to the second year. Many students place into these courses and never enroll; others enroll at some point after the first academic term, even when faced with...
Environmental scientists, land managers, and policy actors are increasingly presented with high-stakes high-uncertainty problems stemming from human-ecosystem interactions. To help address these problems, scientists frequently use models that produce enormous geospatial and temporal datasets that are constantly modified and often seek input from communities outside their discipline. To assist scientists—as...
In this work, I address foundational concerns at the interface of institutions, governance structure, transaction costs, and efficiency in public-private contracting. Following transaction cost economic perspective, I build and justify the theoretical models explaining that institutions may affect the economic performance of public-private contracting through the effect of transaction costs....
This research examined public perceptions of risk, behavioral intentions in the event of the M9 Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) earthquake and tsunami on the Oregon Coast, and factors that may influence both attitudes and intentions. A household survey was conducted to understand public opinion in Seaside, Oregon, which is located...
Background: Legislators, policy-makers, and leaders in higher education and within communities, are increasingly turning to place-based scholarships, or “promise programs”, to encourage college enrollment and address growing public concerns regarding college affordability. One such program, the Oregon Promise, was implemented across the state of Oregon in the fall of 2016....
Climate change increases weather unpredictability, threatens communities whose livelihoods depend on natural resources, such as rural communities. Utilizing a Community Capital Framework (Flora and Flora, 2013) and Governance of Complex Adaptive Systems (Duit and Galaz, 2008), this study concentrated on the role of cultural and political capital in supporting rural...
The state of Oregon is divided in important ways along rural and urban lines, including the way people make a living, individual and group relationships with the natural world, political ideologies, and personal values. This rural-urban divide has assisted policymakers in making decisions that balance the needs of Oregonians on...
This dissertation examines learning driven adaptations in salmon recovery efforts and water resources management in Oregon. The case study utilizes a framework highlighting the connections between human and natural systems. Semi-structured interviews are used to analyze interactions between rural riparian landowners and watershed council staffs living and working in Oregon’s...
The VISualization of Terrestrial and Aquatic Systems (VISTAS) software development project began with the proposition that visualization would increase the ability of scientists to explore and communicate their data, especially complex datasets that span multiple spatial and temporal scales. A case study of VISTAS articulates how and why scientists intend...
Central Oregon's landscape is rich in dry forests prone to frequent wildfires. Climate change studies and improved modeling indicate this region could experience conditions that result in an increase in number and severity of wildfires. With the potential for increased environmental hazards, the nearby communities face potential risks and vulnerabilities...
Seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum Sw.) is an important warm-season perennial turfgrass, known for its tolerance to salinity. Turfgrass is used for homes, municipalities, sod farms, resorts, and sports fields. Seashore paspalum has historically been planted in sub-tropical and tropical climates because of its heat tolerance. Seashore paspalum could become an...
River basins provide essential services for both humans and ecosystems. Understanding the connections between ecosystems and society and their function has been at the heart of resilience studies and has become an increasing important endeavor in research and practice. In this dissertation, I define basin resilience as a river basin...
Intact sagebrush communities in the Great Basin are rapidly disappearing due
to invasion of non-native plants, large wildfires, and encroachment of pinyon pine
and juniper woodlands. Land management options include the use of prescribed
fire, grazing, herbicides and mechanical treatments to reduce the potential for
wildfire and restore plant communities....
The purpose of this study is to critically explore low-income women's experience as they negotiate post secondary education in community colleges. Three research questions explore the context through which low-income women have entered the college experience, what that experience is like for them, and how the community college experience has...
Literature on the evolution of the American higher education system includes a historical and consistent debate over the definition of the higher education mission in the country. Recent debate focuses on mission differentiation between the university and the community college. Acknowledging systemic changes in higher education historically occurred within regions...
The purpose of this research study was to describe and improve understanding of the meaning of institutionalized sustainability and the role that a college president plays in institutionalizing sustainability on a community college campus. The following questions guided the research: (a) What does it mean to have sustainability “institutionalized” at...
This research examines two questions: 1) What stories do Christian teacher educators tell about their own White racial identity development? and 2) Is there an impact of studying White racial identity development on the praxis of Christian teacher educators? If so, in what ways? The researcher began the project with...
In the United States, many of the thorniest natural resource conflicts occur on private lands. This is especially true in the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon where the hallmark habitat type, Oregon white oak woodland and savanna, is imperiled. Almost exclusively found on private land, Oregon white oak is threatened...
Floods are the most frequent and damaging of all types of natural disasters and annually affect the lives of millions all over the globe. However, researchers seem to have overlooked the fact that floods do not recognize national boundaries. Therefore, the phenomena of shared, or transboundary floods occurring in international...
With 97% of the world’s freshwater resources stored underground, the connection between groundwater resources to the metrics of space, scale and time common to the geographic study of natural resources has not been extensively investigated by geographers. While nearly 240 transboundary aquifers are mapped across the world, a potential “tragedy”...
Since the 1890s, American federalism has been perceived as being unique in the world by having two different levels of government operating within the same jurisdiction without influencing one another. Modern scholars call into question the validity of this basic assumption, but few have published quantitative evidence to reject its...
The objectives and characteristics of university biotechnology research, including its applicability to such industries as agriculture and food processing, arise from formal and informal linkages among university scientists, public and private-nonprofit funding sources, and industry. In the present study I develop, specify, and estimate a model of the supply and...
Dead wood patterns and dynamics vary with biophysical factors, disturbance history, ownership, and management practices. Through field and modeling studies, I examined the current and potential future amounts of dead wood in two landscapes and region-wide in the Coastal Province of Oregon. The objectives of the first study were to...
Transcending human-defined political and administrative boundaries, the world's transboundary freshwater resources pose particularly challenging management problems. Water resource users at all scales frequently find themselves in direct competition for this economic and life-sustaining resource, in turn creating tensions, and indeed conflict, over water supply, allocation and quality. At the international...