Faculty Profiles
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This site provides a forum for showcasing the work of individual faculty members. Faculty may have their work archived here as well as with their departments or institutes.
Faculty interested in establishing a collection for themselves in Scholars' Bank are invited to contact, Scholars' Bank team, University of Oregon Libraries.
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Item Open Access Open Secrets: Exploring Institutional Spending on Open Access(Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA), 2024-12-20) Rigby, MiriamA robust corpus exists on Open Access (OA) spending within libraries, however there is less literature on assessing OA expenditures across colleges and universities. Due to the nature of the fragmented and uneven investment in OA, researchers are likely not optimizing institutional resources on Article Processing Charges (APCs) as part of the open access environment. This article describes how personnel at University of Oregon Libraries built a Power BI model to encapsulate and visualize our institution’s open access outlay as well as apprise researchers of their options for selecting OA publication venues based on APCs and impact metrics.Item Open Access Re-evaluating hypertragulid diversity in the John Day basin, Oregon, USA(Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 2024-09-25) Famoso, Nicholas; Jewell, Lana K.Despite their relative abundance, members of the family Hypertragulidae (Artiodactyla, Mammalia) have proved a conundrum regarding species diversity in the Turtle Cove Member (Oligocene) of the John Day Formation, located in central and eastern Oregon. Three species and two separate genera are described in the area, but previous research lacks statistical support for this level of variation. We use coefficients of variation (V) on measurements of dentition and astragali of hypertragulid specimens designated Hypertragulus hesperius, Hypertragulus minutus, and Nanotragulus planiceps as a metric for determining whether there were multiple species present in the population. Asymptotic and modified signed-likelihood ratio V equality tests show that V values of anterior-posterior molar length and transverse molar width vary significantly when comparing single species of modern ecological analogs (Muntiacus muntjak, Muntiacus reevesi, and Tragulus javanicus) to groupings of a combined population. However, the V equality tests on dental and postcranial measurements yield almost no significant results when comparing variation in the extinct John Day hypertragulids to an extant population comprised of a single species. Similar comparisons between astragali measurements of hypertragulids and T. javanicus express no significant difference in the level of variation from the combined population to a modern single species. The low level of variation in the hypertragulids and the lack of differentiation between dental characters of individuals does not statistically support the hypothesis that there were multiple species present in the population, suggesting either that cryptic species may be present but impossible to identify without soft tissue remains, or there may have been taxonomic over-splitting of a single hypertragulid species in the John Day region.Item Open Access Esports buffs: the perceived role of fans and fandoms in U.S. collegiate programs(Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 2024-09-11) Cote, Amanda C.; Rahman, Md Waseq Ur; Foxman, Maxwell; Wilson, Andrew; Harris, Brandon C.; Can, Onder; Hansen, Jared C.Introduction: Collegiate esports—organized competitive gaming—has expanded rapidly in the United States, drawing in student players, broadcasters, and support staff, as well as university employees. Universities have invested financially in esports, hoping to capitalize on gaming fandom to attract prospective students and enhance campus community integration. Little research, however, addresses collegiate esports fandom in depth. Methods: Drawing on thirty-one in-depth interviews with collegiate esports players, student workers, program directors, and administrators, this article investigates how collegiate esports participants perceive and discuss their fans. Results: We identify three central themes related to fans in the dataset: discussions of fans’ role in the collegiate esports environment, comparisons between esports and traditional sports fans, and concerns about the underutilization of fans within collegiate esports spaces. Subsequently, we theorize these themes through existing research on professional esports and traditional collegiate sports fandoms, as well as through the concept of “fan labor,” or how the productive work of fans provides value to the nascent industry. Discussion: This article thus not only specifically explores how collegiate esports programs are normalizing fan labor as an essential part of their practices, but also questions who benefits from this relationship and how. Investigating collegiate esports fans as an under-researched group additionally provides a new perspective on how fan labor integrates with media industries more broadly.Item Open Access Discovery of Oligocene-aged mammals in Glacier National Park (Kishenehn Formation), Montana(Geodiversitas, 2024-06-24) Famoso, Nicholas; Calede, Jonathan J., 1988-; Kehl, Winifred A.; Constenius, Kurt N.The Kishnehn Formation crops out in Glacier National Park of northwest Montana where a rich fossil record of plant macrofossils, pollen and spores, insects, terrestrial and aquatic mollusks, and fish has been unearthed. Past research has also described an extensive mammal fauna from the Eocene (Uintan-Chadronian). Oligocene-aged fossil mammals have been reported before, but none has ever been published in the peer-reviewed literature. Here, we present the first Arikareean-aged fossil mammals from the Kishenehn Formation, the youngest fossil mammals ever discovered in the park. The fossils consist of a set of lower jaws of the leptomerycid Pronodens transmontanus (Douglas, 1903) and a partial lower jaw of the rodent Paciculus montanus Black, 1961, both endemics of the northern Rocky Mountains. These new fossils enable us to explore the morphological variation in Pronodens Koerner, 1940 and Paciculus Cope, 1879. Our analyses suggest the existence of a single widely distributed and sometimes locally abundant species of Pronodens, which may co-occur with a rare and very large second species. Our revised diagnoses for the genus and species show the need for additional work on this little-studied artiodactyl genus. Similar efforts on the systematics of cricetid rodents will benefit from building upon our analysis of tooth morphology in Paciculus to shed light on the rise of leidymines. The last fossil we describe, partial paired dentaries of Miohippus Marsh, 1874, is the northern-most occurrence of the genus in the Rocky Mountains and shows the potential for future work in the Kishenehn Formation to enable the study of faunal change across the Eocene-Oligocene boundary in the northern Rocky Mountains.Item Open Access New occurrences of mammals from McKay Reservoir (Hemphillian, Oregon)(Journal of Paleontology, 2024-05-07) Orcutt, John D.; Schmer, Christiana J.; Lubisich, Jeffrey P.; Abrams, Lacy T.; Famoso, NicholasEncompassing global cooling, the spread of grasslands, and biogeographic interchanges, the Hemphillian North American Land Mammal Age is an important interval for understanding the factors driving ecological and evolutionary change through time. McKay Reservoir near Pendleton, Oregon is a natural laboratory for analyses of these factors. It is remarkable for its small vertebrate fauna including rodents, bats, turtles, and lagomorphs, but also for its larger mammal fossils like camelids, rhinocerotids, canids, and felids. Despite the importance of the site, few revisions to its faunal list have been published since its original description. We expand on this description by identifying taxa not previously known from McKay Reservoir based on specimens collected during fieldwork and through reidentification of previously collected fossils. Newly identified taxa include the borophagine canid Borophagus secundus (Matthew and Cook, 1909), the camelids Megatylopus Matthew and Cook, 1909 and Pleiolama Webb and Meachen, 2004, a dromomerycid, and the equids Cormohipparion Skinner and MacFadden, 1977 and Pseudhipparion Ameghino, 1904. Specimens previously assigned to Neohipparion Gidley, 1903 and Hipparion de Christol, 1832 lack the features necessary to diagnose these genera, which are therefore removed from the site's faunal list. The presence of Borophagus secundus, Cormohipparion, and Pseudhipparion is especially important, because each occurrence represents a major geographic range extension. This refined understanding of the fauna lays the foundation for future studies of taphonomy, taxonomy, functional morphology, and paleoecology—potentially at the population, community, or ecosystem levels—at this paleobiologically significant Miocene locality.Item Open Access Outshine with the Superfine Frankenstein Pipeline at Timberline: Visualizing Cost Per Use in Power BI(The Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge, Oregon, 2024-05) Harlan, Lydia; Buxton, Kristin; Hayden, GabrieleLooking to establish a current and reproducible cost per use analysis for continuing resources, three members of University of Oregon Libraries explored ways to ingest, store, and visualize cost and usage data. Our presentation describes how we developed a pipeline using Alma, COUNTER5, SUSHI, APIs, Python, and Power BI to create an easily refreshed dashboard for collections assessment. Our tool shifts the time investment from manually harvesting usage statistics to interpreting the data and sharing it with stakeholders. By establishing this automated pipeline, we created an up-to-date dashboard and reproducible model that we can share with others and improve upon in future permutations. We hope that attendees of this presentation will feel inspired to use visualization to tell stories and become curious about constructing a data pipeline of their own.Item Open Access Recasting Twitch: Livestreaming, Platforms, and New Frontiers in Digital Journalism(Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-04-05) Foxman, Maxwell; Harris, Brandon C.; Partin, William ClydeDespite Twitch’s dominant position in Western livestreaming markets, institutional journalists rarely produce content on the platform. This paper investigates how journalistic practices, cultures, business models, and institutions approach Twitch through three empirical sites: The Washington Post’s experimentation with the app, left-leaning political influencer Hasan Piker, and the pro-QAnon 24/7 “news” channel, Patriots’ Soapbox. The cases demonstrate how newsmaking on Twitch flouts traditional journalists’ ideological and occupational boundaries, exploiting the platform’s features and affordances to enroll the audience in a live broadcasting experience.Item Open Access Leveraging SharePoint to Better Manage the University's HR Records(University of Oregon, 2024-02-27) Harlan, LydiaThe goal of this project is to survey UO’s current administrative processes, and how the information (records) from those processes is being handled (where are the records stored, who is responsible for them, how do the records get into those systems, who reviews the records for retention, how are the records disposed of). Next, determine which of those processes could be moved into SharePoint, and prioritize the list in terms of what you believe the University should focus on first.Item Open Access Couple Identity Work: Collaborative Couplehood, Gender Inequalities, and Power in Naming(Gender & Society, 2024-01) Vasquez-Tokos, Jessica; Sue, Christina A.; Nunez, Adriana C.The study of baby naming is valuable for understanding how gender inequality is reproduced in families. Often treated as an event, baby naming also represents an important social and cultural process that can reveal gendered dynamics in couple decision-making. Baby naming, which represents a highly visible and symbolic family milestone, is a strategic site in which to examine how couple identities are constructed—for self, partner, and others—through the naming process and through stories parents tell of how they named the baby. Drawing on 46 interviews with U.S. Mexican-origin heterosexual parents, we expose tensions that result when practices do not align with a desired (egalitarian) couple identity and detail the ensuing cognitive, emotion, and narrative labor that parents—primarily women—perform to reconcile inconsistencies. We introduce the concept of couple identity work, or the work involved in creating and projecting a desired impression of a relationship for multiple audiences, to provide a theoretical framework for these gendered dynamics. We show how couple identity work is enacted—and power expressed—through men’s and women’s strategies of action/inaction and storytelling, and how this work reproduces and obscures gendered power and inequality in the intimate context of baby naming.Item Open Access Microtomography of an enigmatic fossil egg clutch from the Oligocene John Day Formation, Oregon, USA, reveals an exquisitely preserved 29-million-year-old fossil grasshopper ootheca(Parks Stewardship Forum, 2024) Lee, Jaemin; Famoso, Nicholas; Lin, AngelaEggs are one of the least understood life stages of insects, and are poorly represented in the fossil record. Using microtomography, we studied an enigmatic fossil egg clutch of a presumed entomological affinity from the Oligocene Turtle Cove Member, John Day Formation, from the National Park Service-administered lands of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon. A highly organized egg mass comprising a large clutch size of approximately 50 slightly curved ellipsoidal eggs arranged radially in several planes is preserved, enclosed in a disc-shaped layer of cemented and compacted soil particles. Based on the morphology of the overall structure and the eggs, we conclude that the specimen represents a fossilized underground ootheca of the grasshoppers and locusts (Orthoptera: Caelifera), also known as an egg pod. This likely represents the oldest and the first unambiguous fossil evidence of a grasshopper egg pod. We describe Subterroothecichnus radialis igen. et isp. nov. and Curvellipsoentomoolithus laddi oogen. et oosp. nov., representing the egg pod and the eggs, respectively. We advocate for adopting ootaxonomy in studying fossil eggs of entomological affinities, as widely practiced with fossil amniotic eggs. An additional 26 individual and clustered C. laddi collected throughout the A–H subunits of the Turtle Cove Member suggest the stable presence of grasshoppers in the Turtle Cove fauna, and we discuss the paleoecological implications. Oothecae have convergently evolved several times in several insect groups; this ovipositional strategy likely contributed to the fossilization of this lesser-known ontogenetic stage, enriching our understanding of past insect life.Item Open Access The Latino Middle Class(Annual Review of Sociology, 2024) Vasquez-Tokos, Jessica; Vallejo, Jody AgiusLatino educational gains over time and income mobility portend a burgeoning Latino middle class. In this article, we critically review scholarship on the Latino middle class, from theoretical perspectives aiming to explain Latino experiences to empirical research investigating mechanisms that promote, and barriers that thwart, upward mobility. Studies suggest that the Latino middle class is distinctive for many reasons—from structural barriers to asset accumulation, legal status precarity for self or family, financial responsibility for class-disadvantaged kin, and negative controlling images that bog down class ascension. Scholars’ recent efforts to decouple middle-class status from Whiteness is an important contribution that undercuts the notion that melding into Whiteness is the desired outcome of middle-class integration. In addition to the utility of education to upward mobility, we contend that studies of middle-class pathways should expand to recognize that Latinos are engaging in workarounds—career paths not requiring a bachelor's degree, such as business ownership or credentialed professions. Workarounds are an intervention that accounts for routes to mobility that are eclipsed by conventional conceptions of mobility. Ultimately, we argue that Latinos are attaining middle-class status even as they are racialized, thereby expanding the minoritized middle class.Item Open Access Cost per Use in Power BI using Alma Analytics and a Dash of Python Authors Lydia(University of Oregon Libraries, 2024) Harlan, Lydia; Buxton, Kristin; Hayden, GabrielleA trio of personnel at University of Oregon Libraries explored options for automating a pathway to ingest, store, and visualize cost per use data for continuing resources. This paper presents a pipeline for using Alma, SUSHI, COUNTER5, Python, and Power BI to create a tool for data-driven decision making. By establishing this pipeline, we shift the time investment from manually harvesting usage statistics to interpreting the data and sharing it with stakeholders. The resulting visualizations and collected data will assist in making informed, collaborative decisions.Item Open Access Automating for Success: Making Invisible Work Visible(University of Oregon, 2023-10-27) Harlan, Lydia; Buxton, Kristin; Hayden, GabrieleKnowing your value and optimizing your time can help meet your professional and institutional goals. We describe how an ad-hoc team of people from three different departments, with three different primary goals, were able to successfully complete a project to automate the collection and dissemination of cost-per-use data for continuing resources, saving our colleagues many hours of work, and creating a dashboard that requires little maintenance. In the process we learned a bunch of current technology—Power BI, APIs, and data visualization, to name a few that we can apply to other projects.Item Open Access The Fear of Personal Death and the Willingness to Commit to Organ Donation(Sage, 2023-09) Kogut, Tehila; Pittarello, Andrea; Slovic, PaulIn three studies, with samples from different countries (the United States and Israel) and religions (Christians and Jews), we found that individual levels of fear of death significantly predicted lower willingness to register as organ donors (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, after being asked about their organ donation status (i.e., whether they are registered as donors), fear of death significantly increased among unregistered people. This did not occur among registered people, who had already faced the decision to become donors in the past (Study 2). Finally, providing non-registered (non-religious) people with a defense strategy to manage their fear of death increased their willingness to sign an organ donation commitment, partially by increasing their feelings of hopefulness. The implications of these findings for increasing organ donation registration are discussed.Item Open Access Artificial imaginings: ChatGPT envisions its future in academic libraries(2023-07)Miriam: Many essays have been written recently about ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/) and its impact on higher education, not least of which is a review of the technology in C&RL News in March 2023. But how many have asked ChatGPT what it has to say on the matter? I set out to learn what ChatGPT thought it could contribute to academic libraries. ChatGPT: Hi there, I’m ChatGPT! As a language model, I wrote a fun essay on using ChatGPT in academic libraries. I generated the text using my natural language processing skills, which let me create text that sounds like a real person wrote it. It’s like magic! I used my programming and training to come up with the essay, and I’d love to answer any questions you have.Item Open Access The prominence effect in health-care priority setting(Cambridge University Press, 2022-11) Persson, Emil; Erlandsson, Arvid; Slovic, Paul; Vastfjall, Daniel; Tinghog, GustavPeople often choose the option that is better on the most subjectively prominent attribute — the prominence effect. We studied the effect of prominence in health care priority setting and hypothesized that values related to health would trump values related to costs in treatment choices, even when individuals themselves evaluated different treatment options as equally good. We conducted pre-registered experiments with a diverse Swedish sample and a sample of international experts on priority setting in health care (n = 1348). Participants, acting in the role of policy makers, revealed their valuation for different medical treatments in hypothetical scenarios. Participants were systematically inconsistent between preferences expressed through evaluation in a matching task and preferences expressed through choice. In line with our hypothesis, a large proportion of participants (General population: 92%, Experts 84% of all choices) chose treatment options that were better on the health dimension (lower health risk) despite having previously expressed indifference between those options and others that were better on the cost dimension. Thus, we find strong evidence of a prominence effect in health-care priority setting. Our findings provide a psychological explanation for why opportunity costs (i.e., the value of choices not exercised) are neglected in health care priority setting.Item Open Access Lessons for Journalists from Virtual Worlds(Columbia Journalism Review, 2022-10-06) Foxman, MaxwellIn the darkest days of the covid-19 pandemic, as many people figured out how to work and live in isolation, they turned to various virtual worlds and spaces for comfort. From games like Animal Crossing to Zoom, the popularity of communing and communicating both virtually and synchronously skyrocketed and persists in “post pandemic” life. Everything from conferences to the rising concept of the “metaverse” connects to virtual worlds. At the same time, the pandemic was merely tinder for a fire that has been flickering in digital gaming for decades. Almost twenty years earlier, news outlets like CNN and Reuters set up bureaus in Second Life and experimented with virtual-reality (VR) content. While concepts like the metaverse are positioned as future technology, virtual worlds are already widely available. Given this reality, how should journalists write about them, or even use them, in the present? This report takes a first step in answering this question. After providing a brief history, it defines virtual worlds as online and digital spaces of implied vast size in which users congregate, mostly synchronously. Approximations of virtual worlds can be found in online gaming, VR, and livestreaming platforms like Twitch, all of which cater to hundreds of thousands of concurrent users, if not more, at any given time. Using the pandemic as the launching point for research, the report then analyzes 379 articles that reflect journalists’ current and shifting views about virtual worlds. Animal Crossing, Twitch, and VR technology represent three archetypal cases. An inductive analysis of key themes is followed by semistructured interviews with twenty-one journalists who wrote about the subject. These interviews support specific lessons writers can take in how to approach virtual worlds from a journalistic viewpoint, as well as the opportunities and drawbacks of using them as tools.Item Open Access Beyond Genre: Classifying Virtual Reality Experiences(IEEE, 2022-09) Foxman, Maxwell; Beyea, David; Leith, Alex P.; Ratan, Rabindra; Hua Chen, Vivian Hsueh; Klebig, BrianBecause virtual reality (VR) shares common features with video games, consumer content is usually classified according to traditional game genres and standards. However, VR offers different experiences based on the medium’s unique affordances. To account for this disparity, the paper presents a comparative analysis of titles from the Steam digital store across three platform types: VR only, VR supported, and non-VR. We analyzed data from a subset of the most popular applications within each category (N=141, 93, and 1217, respectively). The three classification types we analyzed were academic game genres, developer defined categories, and user-denoted tags. Results identify the most common content classifications (e.g., Action and Shooter within VR only applications), the relative availability of each between platforms (e.g., Casual is more common in VR only than VR supported or non-VR), general platform popularity (e.g., VR only received less positive ratings than VR supported and nonVR), and which content types are associated with higher user ratings across platforms (e.g., Action and Music/Rhythm are most positively rated in VR only). Our findings ultimately provide a foundational framework for future theoretical constructions of classification systems based on content, market, interactivity, sociality, and service dependencies, which underlay how consumer VR is currently categorized.Item Open Access Virtual reality and music's impact on psychological well-being(Frontier Media, 2022-08-11) Foxman, Maxwell; Pimentel, Danny; Alexanian, StephenQuality of life is bound to psychological well-being, which in turn is affected by the frequency and magnitude of negative mood states. To regulate mood states, humans often consume media such as music and movies, with varied degrees of effectiveness. The current investigation examined the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) vs. two-dimensional (2D) online interventions with various stimuli (audiovisual vs. visual only vs. audio only) to assess which interventions were most effective for improved well-being. Additionally, this study examined which groups displayed the highest amount of perceived presence to understand what components are essential when maximizing a person’s subjective feeling of being “in” a new place and if this translated toward therapeutic results. Our data suggests that even though VR participants generally experienced more presence and had similar benefits as 2D groups for increasing positive mood, only participants in the 2D groups had a reduction in negative mood overall with 2D audiovisual participants experiencing the best results. These results contradict past studies which indicate that there could be other psychological and theoretical considerations that may play a role in determining what online experiences are more effective than just examining presence and immersive stimuli. Further research and development into using VR as a tool for improved wellbeing is needed to understand its efficacy in remote and in-person setting.Item Open Access Estimating ability for two samples(2022-07-13) Revelle, William; Condon, David M.Using IRT to estimate ability is easy, but how accurate are the estimate and what about multiple samples?