Rural communities face acute challenges in providing education. Attachment to place plays a significant role in rural communities but little research exists on how it influences policy. One policy response to financial, physical, and cultural factors in rural Oregon is the four-day school week (FDSW). Through health survey responses of...
There have been years of stalled K-12 school finance reform efforts in Idaho, yet it was unclear what key Idaho education interest groups currently thought about how Idaho funds its public schools. Therefore, this project explored the institutional perspectives and beliefs of K-12 Idaho education stakeholders regarding the Idaho K-12...
Children enter kindergarten on unequal footing. Early childhood experiences shape initial disparities and predict academic achievement and life trajectories. One influence, child care, is not available to all children in Oregon as most counties qualify as child care deserts. This paper analyzes if child care access has an effect on...
Children enter kindergarten on unequal footing. Early childhood experiences shape initial disparities and predict academic achievement and life trajectories. One influence, child care, is not available to all children in Oregon as most counties qualify as child care deserts. This paper analyzes if child care access has an effect on...
The 2008 financial crisis started a domino effect that crippled much of the United States economy. Most associate this crisis with large scale mortgage failure and an increase in unemployment. These were two of the main causes and effects of the crisis. However, society as a whole was also impacted....
In 2011 Oregon enacted a public education open enrollment policy that gives students and families the choice of what school to attend, regardless of district lines. Despite the lack of public information, this policy will sunset this school year unless it is further extended during legislative session. This paper attempts...
Noise is an environmental issue uniquely harmful to public welfare but essential to a well-functioning modern economy. Given the prevalence of noise especially in urban soundscapes, noise pollution has been recognized as a negative externality and an environmental stressor and thus has become an issue in public policy. Yet, as...
This paper evaluates the previously unknown effect that a Fiscal Stress Label (FSL), a State fiscal intervention program signaling fiscal duress, has on passage rates and voter support for school district tax referenda. Previous research suggests that FSL receipt is associated with increased school district revenue, however the reason why...
Geological scientists have predicted an impending massive earthquake is likely to occur on the North Pacific Coast of the US. In response to the warnings of impending disaster, the State of Oregon has implemented several disaster preparedness measures, including the Seismic Rehabilitation Grant Project (SRGP), a grant dispersed to public...
The purpose of this study was to evaluate a contextual model for integrating lessons
from the LifeKnowledge curriculum into the agricultural science and technology (AST) course content. This was measured using the National FFA Organization’s online precept indicator which is part of the LifeKnowledge 3.0 curriculum. Ninth grade students at...
The LifeKnowledge curriculum is a recent initiative of the National FFA Organization to develop key learning precepts in agriculture education students. This material utilizes cutting-edge teaching techniques in lesson plans designed to develop leadership, teamwork, personal development, and communication abilities in students. This project surveyed current agriculture teachers in Oregon...
Studies on prison violence have typically focused attention at individual level inmate-on-inmate assaults, however, there has been limited research into the rates of inmate-on-staff violence at the facility level. There also appears to be a need for further scholarship relating to the differences in various prison level predictors of inmate...
The idea for this research projected stemmed from research I conducted during my Economics 439: Public Policy course. This research project examines the idea of Voter Identification Laws and Regulations and their effect on voter turnout and participation in the United States of America. I previously found that economists studied...
This thesis analyzes the emerging technology of hydraulic fracturing and shale gas extraction process through a pluralistic philosophical approach. Rather than defending traditional values in nature, such as intrinsic value, I defend a metaphilosophical pragmatism centered on policy implications. I argue that different philosophical positions will, most of the time,...
It has long been recognized by the legal community that when an immigrant seeks relief from deportation proceedings through the United States’ immigration courts, the proceedings they undertake are best seen as a game of chance depending on the Immigration Judge who is randomly assigned to their case. This thesis...
The purpose of this study was to identify if differences existed in perceived barrier factors and perceived attitude factors toward distance education between faculty and administrators in the decision stage and those in the implementation stage of distance education technology adoption. Information was gathered from teaching faculty and program leaders...
Persistent reading difficulties are prevalent in U.S. schools and can lead to lower student performance across all subjects as well as distress, anxiety, and depression. In 2022, only 32% of fourth graders in the United States tested as proficient in reading. While there are many factors which affect reading progress...
A study of mortality, food consumption, food utilization, and
polyhedral production following single and simultaneous challenges
of the variegated cutworm, Peridroma saucia (Hubner), with DDT
and a nuclear polyhedrosis virus was made. Fourth instar larvae
were challenged topically with three levels of DDT and per os with
three levels of...
Boron sprays produced fruit set increases in 'Barcelona'
hazelnut orchards in 1984 and in 1985. The absolute fruit set was
correlated with leaf B content but not with nut B. With relative
fruit set (RFS), B content of nuts in May (r = 0.63**) was more
strongly related to set...
I defend robust realism from arguments that raise epistemological challenges to it based on considerations about either moral disagreement or the genealogy of our moral beliefs. The first argument is the “Argument from Conciliationism,” which contends that the moral disagreements that obtain between moral peers give us reason to believe...
The Oregon education system at both the K-12 and Postsecondary level is strained for resources, with funding at levels far below the national average. This is due, in large part, to the small percentage of state taxes that are used to fund education. Public support for additional revenue for schools...
Economic sanctions are widely used in the international arena in order to reconcile political conflicts and retain peace between countries. Most states prefer to use economic sanctions rather than military interventions as a more efficient tool to maintain political stability and protect their own interests. Nevertheless, sanctions are not always...
The rising cost of higher education in the United States has created increases in tuition at colleges as well as growing demand from students and families for sources of support in attending college. Over the past decade, beginning with the creation of the Kalamazoo Promise in 2005, local governments and...
According to the International Labor Organization, the use of migrant labor force has shown an increasing trend over the past decade. This indicates that migrant workers are potentially becoming a vital factor affecting the world’s economy and industries. Since labor productivity is important indicator of economic growth and prosperity, it...
At any given time, 60% to 85% of prisoners across the United States are struggling with substance addiction and dependence. Upon release, about two-thirds of former prisoners will reoffend and return to prison. Due to the high rate of substance use and abuse in prisons, drug treatment, specifically Correctional Therapeutic...
This study is designed to evaluate to what degree action at the household level in WUI wildfire preparedness is influenced by targeted public information, or behaviorally informed, interventions. The desired outcome of the public information interventions is increasing the number of households taking action to reduce wildfire risk through the...
The Afghan public higher education (HE) system absorbs less than one-fifth of government education spending and per student spending declines, while the student annual enrollment is rising. This contrast may trigger challenges and inevitable tradeoffs for the public universities to
encounter. Policies concerning the diversification of financing stream need attention;...
The initial research question for this study asked whether single women were having their employment needs met by the union in a university setting. Twelve single women who were members of a union at a university participated in semi-structured interviews about their experiences with the union. To the surprise of...
The objective of this dissertation is to examine federally administered soil conservation policy within the United States and the broadly defined Columbia River Basin in the US Northwest. I accomplish this in five chapters. In the first chapter I provide background information for the study. In the second chapter I...
This thesis explores some of the ethical issues pertaining to the use of so-called radical enhancement technology. Key concepts analyzed include “normal function”, “human being”, and “personhood.” I argue that the use of these key concepts in the debate thus far has lacked philosophical rigor, and that a reexamination of...
This qualitative study explored the role of leadership in implementing co-teaching for English language development in K-12 settings, specifically, the role of leadership of administrators and teacher-leaders. Research has confirmed that school leaders substantially impact student outcomes and teacher effectiveness (Cheung et al., 2018; Leithwood et al., 2004; Liebowitz &...
Hume’s division of truth into agreement with matters of fact or relations of ideas casts doubt on our capacity to have moral knowledge, as moral propositions do not seem to fall obviously into either category. This thesis looks at how two views, ‘descriptive moral functionalism’ and ‘moral concept essentialism’, try...
Nonnegative matrices have a myriad of applications in the biological, social, and physical genres. Of particular importance are the primitive matrices. A nonnegative matrix, M, is primitive exactly when there is a positive integer, k, such that M[superscript k] has only positive entries; that is, all the entries in M[superscript...
An examination was made of some reactions involving a transfer
of carbon from boron to carbon. In the case of the reaction of
a C[subscript n] alkylorganoborane with dichlorocarbene the intermediate was
a C[subscript n]₊₁ chloroalkylorganoborane. Oxidation of this intermediate
yielded an homologous acid (33%) and the usual alcohol (66%)....
Habitat for wildlife species that depend on sagebrush ecosystems is of great management concern. Evaluating how management activities and climate change may affect the abundance of moderate and high-quality habitat necessitates the development of models that examine vegetation dynamics, but modeling tools for rangeland systems are limited. I developed state-and-transition...
Policy makers in the United States (US), following recommendations made by the international scientific community, have drafted national emissions reduction legislation in hopes of minimizing the harmful effects of global climate change. Included in this legislation is a national cap-and-trade system with provisions for carbon offsets. Specific provisions for forest...
In Islam, paying and receiving interest is prohibited based on the belief that money should not be a commodity that is “rented” out; instead, Islamic lending structures arrange loans on an equity basis. This work examines the historical origins of interest prohibition and explains how different Islamic financial products provide...
Transportation contributes approximately 41 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions and 27 percent of national greenhouse gas emissions (CARB, 2019, EPA, 2017). In response to climate change concerns, stakeholders have encouraged the use of electric and hybrid vehicles through tax credits, rebates, and education campaigns. Environmental and transportation justice groups...
St. Joseph's College was located within St. Paul, Oregon, the first Roman Catholic mission in the Pacific Northwest. The St. Paul mission was finally established in 1839 by Father Francois Blanchet, four years after the French-Canadian settlers in the area, appropriately known as French Prairie, had requested the presence of...
In this dissertation, a series of studies in the field of terahertz (THz) science are presented, specifically using nonlinear THz spectroscopy. We exploit huge field enhancement and subwavelength confinement in plasmonic structures. There are three distinct projects which will be discussed: nonlinear THz spectroscopy using plasmonic induced transparency (PIT), THz-triggered...
Experiments were conducted to determine: (1) effects of pretransplant
stolon formation on performance of potato transplants in
the field and greenhouse; (2) effects of parent plant nodal position
on productivity of rooted nodal cuttings; and (3) relationships
between photoperiod and stolon formation.
The effects of early stolon formation on Russet...
In the past, sharks, skates and ray species have mainly occurred in incidental fisheries. Now they are increasingly being directly targeted due to the depleted status of traditionally targeted species. The life history characteristics of many elasmobranch species make them more sensitive to high rates of fishing mortality. The combination...
Falls in older adults are a significant issue in the United States. Many older adults are advised to participate in fall prevention exercise programs in an attempt to increase strength and stability, but it is unclear what role limb dominance and potential limb asymmetry has in exercise performance. The purpose...
This investigation was designed to investigate the use of an answer-until-correct procedure on multiple-choice quizzes in an independent study mathematics course. This procedure was compared to the standard multiple-choice procedure with respect to student achievement, student anxiety, and test reliability. Using the answer-until-correct procedure students were made immediately aware of...
This dissertation primarily uses observations made during the 2005 Kashmir earthquake relief effort and available disaster literature to address problems that impede effective and efficient disaster preparedness and response. Three manuscripts form the body of the dissertation. The manuscripts are thematically linked through the Emergency Management Cycle. Each manuscript examines...
The founders of Cascadia Community College changed faculty role and duties as they designed a new college. The college founders chose which themes of learning reform would be enacted by faculty in this new setting. They determined what elements of traditional roles continued to be important and what new expectations...
N-ary relationships, which relate N entities where N is not necessarily two, are omnipresent in real life. In this thesis, we develop a visualization technique for N-ary relationships.
First, we propose a visual metaphor that utilizes vertices and polygons to represent entities and N-ary relationships. Based on this visual metaphor,...
A cultural landscape analysis of two historic cemeteries in St. Paul, Oregon demonstrates that the residents of this early community were unknowingly using grave markers to express their worldview and the identities that they felt were most important. Because of the historical and cultural development of this community as the...
Biological plant invasions are diminishing the ecological integrity and function of ecosystems worldwide. A primary example of this is in the Great Basin of the United States, where invasive annual grasses, like cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) and medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae L. Nevski), are dominating many sagebrush-steppe ecosystems. In these invaded...
In the early part of his philosophical career, Paul Ricoeur worked out a general theory of symbols which he illustrated with the symbols of evil. He subsequently explained this theory in several essays (his final major statement on symbols can be found in Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of...
The purpose of this study was to describe the perceptions of the first year experience of teaching secondary agriculture and to explore the relationships between these perceptions, the characteristics of beginning agriculture teachers, and the types of support provided to beginning teachers. An additional focus of the study was to...
Across the U.S. social activism is on the upsurge, offering possibilities for a revolution against capitalism. However, these possibilities are potentially undermined by entrenched factionalism amongst the left. At root, such in-fighting is fostered by the creation of false dualistic frameworks on the transition out of capitalism and into the...
Co-teaching and collaboration are an increasingly popular service model for English as a second language (ESL). In this model, the language specialist, sometimes called the ESL teacher, works together with a content teacher, each using their respective expertise to meet the needs of students who are identified as English learners...
Research overwhelmingly suggests that Black and Brown students face unjust and inequitable environments in K-12 schools in the United States (Bradshaw et al., 2010; Carter et al., 2017; Coles & Powell, 2020). These injustices often occur as a result of systemic racism and are replicated because of embedded racist policies...
:
______________________________________________________
Karen D. Thompson
Abstract
Research overwhelmingly suggests that Black and Brown students face
Until recently, the viscoamylograph had been the primary method for
measuring starch as it relates to noodle quality in wheat. This method
requires a large sample of flour and is time consuming. With the introduction
of the rapid visco-analyser (RVA) in 1986 and the more recent flour swelling
volume procedure,...
This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of a heuristic for
the Traveling Salesman Problem based purely on the efficient
storage of multiple partial sub-tours. The heuristic is among the
best available for the solution of large scale geometric Traveling
Salesman Problems. Additionally, a version of the heuristic can be
used to...
Rubus spp. seeds have a thick protective endocarp and testa (seedcoat) that can
restrict germination even under favorable conditions. The effect of pregermination
treatments were studied in Rubus chamaemorus L., R. eustephanos Focke ex Diels, R.
idaeus 'Amber' L., R. leucodermis Douglas ex Torrey & A. Gray, R. multibracteatus A....
Polyhedra are geometric representations of linear systems of equations and
inequalities. Since polyhedra are used to represent the iteration domains of nested
loop programs, procedures for operating on polyhedra can be used for doing loop
transformations and other program restructuring transformations which are needed
in parallelizing compilers. Thus a need...
This thesis focuses on the creation of a new collaborative website to connect key forestry topics to tourists and forest recreationists. It is divided into two main sections; the first explains the purpose and methods for creation of a new web-based educational tool called Explore Oregon Forests. Created through a...
Quinolinate (QUIN) is an endogenous neurotoxic product of the kynurenine
pathway of tryptophan metabolism. Quinolinate is a selective agonist of the NMDA
family of glutamate receptors and, as such, may play a role in the pathology of a number
of major central nervous system (CNS) disorders. These include both chronic...
Soil bulk density and disturbance were measured before and after a commercial
thinning of 3 0-50 year-old Douglas-fir using a cut-to-length (CTL) and a skyline system
on the Willamette National Forest in the Oregon Cascades. A dual-probe nuclear
densimeter was used to measure bulk density at four and eight inches....
Effective management of urban forests is vital to society due to the numerous ecological, economic, and social benefits they provide. In many cities, management efforts are commonly supported by citizen advisory groups, which are often generically referred to as “tree boards” within the urban forestry context. Very little is known...
Tax incidence involves the study of the pass-through rate of a tax. For example, does a 1 percent increase in a sales tax on a commodity cause the consumer price to go up by exactly 1 percent (full-shifting), less than 1 percent (under-shifting), or more than 1 percent (over-shifting). Theoretical...
Tillamook Bay is the second largest estuary on the Oregon coast, and concerns have been raised whether human induced impacts have been responsible for the perceived increase in sedimentation rates during the past century. Major land-use practices within the five watersheds of the Bay include logging, forest fires, the construction...
Kincaid's lupine (Lupinus oreganus Heller) is a federally listed threatened species native to remnant grassland of western Oregon and southwestern Washington, and is the primary larval host plant of a once thought extinct butterfly, Plebejus icarioides fenderi Macy. Past studies concerning Kincaid's lupine reproduction
suggested that populations may suffer reductions...
Unpaved roads are a critical form of infrastructure in forested landscapes but also a potential source of fine sediment that can degrade sensitive ecosystems nearby. Improved management of aggregate road surfacing can reduce sediment generation, lengthen its useful life span, reduce maintenance costs, and more importantly, mitigate the impacts of...
The N-Queens problem is commonly used to teach the programming technique of backtrack search. The N-Queens problem may also be used to illustrate the important concept of isomorphism. Here we show how the N-Queens problem can be used as a vehicle to teach the concepts of isomorphism, transformation groups or...
In terms of production forestry, more often than not any species that is not the crop
species is considered a competitor as they are using finite growing resources that would
otherwise be available to the crop species. With specific regard to Douglas-fir
(Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) production in the Pacific...
In previous work (Blakemore et al. Org. Lett. 2005, 7, 4721; Heterocycles 2006, 70, 609), successful elaborations of the lupine alkaloids (±)-α-isosparteine (dl-2) and (±)-β-isosparteine (dl-3) were realized from a common tetraoxobispidine precursor, 3,7-diallyl -2,4,6,8-tetraoxo-3,7-diazabicyclo[3.3.1]nonane (93). Herein, the tetraoxobispidine approach to lupine alkaloids was extended to a total synthesis of...
It is estimated that 50-75% of Oregon vineyards cultivate at least every other alley in order to 1) reduce water stress 2) increase vineyard canopy temperatures and 3) increase nutrient availability. Because many vineyards are situated on steep hillsides, frequent tillage could result in increased soil erosion, decreased soil quality...
Short-tailed albatrosses (Phoebastria albatrus, hereafter "STAL") migrate throughout the North Pacific, overlapping with multiple large scale fisheries. In the Bering Sea, documented bycatch of this species is a focal conservation concern, due to the fact that this species is listed as "endangered" under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. We conducted...
The relationship between population characteristics and population productivity is fundamental to sustainable fisheries management, but predicting productivity remains a challenging task. Proposed mechanisms driving the variability in productivity at a given population size have included environmental and demographic factors related to the age structure of the population, but the broad-scale...
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest federal nutrition assistance program in the US aiming at improving health and nutrition among low-income individuals and households. SNAP is a means tested program that provides monthly cash benefits to eligible households and individuals whose assets and net monthly incomes are...
Civic participation has been perceived to be an important aspect in the City of Portland. Portland‟s civic engagement model and the high level of public participation from Portlanders have drawn praises. Not all communities, however, have been included in the democratic process, which should be accessible to all Portlanders. Communities...
______________________________________________________________________________
Robert Thompson, representing Ethnic Studies
I understand that my thesis
Price premiums and discounts are currently paid for various classes of wheat in the US marketplace. These premiums and the known heterogeneity of grain protein across landscapes beg the question of whether grain could be separated on the farm to maximize revenues. Theoretically, the concavity or convexity of a price...
Beginning with the inception of American art history as a formal discipline in the 1940s, the dominant mode of interpreting nineteenth-century American landscape painting has been to view aspects of the landscape as symbols for grand cultural, religious, national, and moral narratives. While this method of interpretation highlights some key...