Clark Honors College Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/169

The thesis is the capstone of a student's academic program at the Clark Honors College. It is an opportunity for each CHC student to build on the education received in both CHC and the academic major to design an independent and original research project. It is the product of the student's original research or creative endeavor and, like graduate theses, must place the research or creative work in the context of prior research or artistic traditions, explain the techniques used to perform the research or develop the creative work, and present and elaborate on the results. Like graduate students, CHC students work closely with faculty members to develop and write their theses and, like graduate students, defend their theses in oral presentations to their thesis committees. There is a fundamental difference between graduate theses and CHC theses; the CHC thesis must be readable by a lay audience, while graduate theses may be written in technical or discipline-specific language.

Beginning in Winter 2005, Clark Honors College students have been notified of the option of submitting their theses to Scholars' Bank and many have done so. Some older theses are also available.

Paper copies of all theses are available in the Robert D. Clark Library on the third floor of Chapman Hall, on the University of Oregon campus. Contact the College for more information: https://honors.uoregon.edu/.

Paper copies of all theses are also available in the University Archives operated by the University of Oregon Libraries. To search the Libraries' catalog, visit the web site at: https://library.uoregon.edu/.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 899

Open Access
$1 CEO Salaries and R&D Spending as a Form of Extreme Incentive Compensation and Investor Signaling
(University of Oregon, 2019) Gardner, Brooke L.
While gaining popularity in mainstream media, the $1 CEO salary is a trend whose motives and impact remain largely misunderstood. This paper examines a dataset of 155 companies that have implemented the $1 salary. Statistical testing is used to analyze the relationship of $1 salaries to several variables including company financial measures and descriptive CEO attributes. The trends in research and development spending, capital expenditures, and stock price that result before and during the $1 salary period are also examined. The goal of this research is to understand the relationship between $1 CEO salaries and long-term spending in the form of research and development and capital expenditures. The secondary goal is to understand how the $1 salary acts as a form of extreme incentive compensation and investor signaling by using long-term spending as a proxy for managerial belief in future firm performance. The findings in this thesis suggest that $1 CEOs have strong beliefs in their firms as demonstrated by the $1 salary and increases to long-term spending. However, investors do not appear to share this same belief in the firm which suggests the $1 salary may be an ineffective attempt at signaling.
Open Access
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT DURING THE ARGENTINE AND CHILEAN JUNTA
(University of Oregon, 2023) Munly, Bo; CHAKRABORTY, SHANKHA
The purpose of this study is to understand why Argentina and Chile, countries in the same region that in some years were concurrently rule by two superficially similar regimes (the most recent Argentine junta known as the Ultima Dictadura and the Chilean junta headed by Augusto Pinochet), had such divergent development outcomes and left their democratic heirs with greatly differing mandates and political cultures. This work attempts to further understanding of the Chilean economy’s success and Argentina’s continual struggles by comparing the countries’ most recent juntas regimes on the basis of their initial mandates, how they acted upon those mandates and how successful each regime’s policies were.
Open Access
A Comprehensive Analysis of Subsidies for Professional Sports Stadiums in the United States using the Moda Center
(University of Oregon, 2020) Quinton, Dawson Xavier
Sports are deeply engrained within the culture of the United States, and professional sports at its highest level generates immense levels of revenue. These sports, however, are played within grand arena’s that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to construct. Part of the burden of these massive stadium costs is placed upon the relevant taxpayers. In theory, these public subsidies incentivize the building of stadiums because they bring a significant economic benefit to the local economy. This thesis aims to better understand if professional sports stadiums provide an economic impact that is more than the amount of public financing they have received. Using an in-depth analysis of Portland, Oregon’s professional sports stadium the Moda Center as a template, to analyze the unique aspects of both the subsidy itself as well as the economic impact of the stadium. This thesis provides a crude model to any municipality hoping to understand if they should provide a subsidy for a stadium, and if so the acceptable amount of the subsidy.
Open Access
A Comprehensive Framework for the Accommodation of Exercise in People with Developmental Disabilities
(University of Oregon, 2020) Eaton, Lauren Elizabeth
The goal of this thesis is to create a framework for professionals in the fitness industry to accommodate people with special needs, specifically those with autism, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy. My intent is to educate personal trainers and other fitness professionals on the need to differentiate and adapt their interactions and training protocols for people with developmental disabilities. This is expected to lead to a decline in the rate of obesity-related disease and causes of death in this population by making exercise more accessible. The annual cost of obesity is roughly $6.38 billion (Trogdon et al., 2008). The framework of this thesis can be implemented to alleviate some of those health-related costs. The methods for this study involved searching key words including “special needs, developmental disability, or mental retardation” and cross-referencing these terms with words like “exercise, fitness, or workout” in information sources such as Web of Science, Sport Discus, and PubMed. The information from the articles retrieved was broken down into categories which provided data for different sections of this thesis.
Open Access
A Formal and Semantic Reconstruction of Cariban Postpositions
(University of Oregon, 2019) Douglas, Jordan A. G.
With at least 25 attested languages in the family, the Cariban Language Family is found from Columbia to French Guiana to the Brazilian Amazon. Through a historical reconstruction that looks at 15 language in the family, this work examines the lexical class of POSTPOSITION—a word class that conveys spatiotemporal and grammatical information. Each language in the family has between 50-150 attested postpositions, many of which were relatively unexamined previously. While many have assumed that postpositions in the family were monomorphemic in nature, this work finds that the majority of the postpositions are in fact bipartite in nature— having either an opaque stem or a relational noun stem with a postpositionalizing suffix. While this bipartite nature of postpositions was observed for four opaque stems and 4 suffixes previously (Derbyshire 1999), this work finds that there are 13 reconstructable suffixes and 72 stems and monomorphemic postpositions—in addition there are multiple suffixes and stems that are limited to a single language. Through this work, the understanding of Cariban postpositions is now fundamentally changed. Monomorphemic postpositions tend to give information about grammatical relations (dative, ergative, addressee, etc.) as well as certain narrow locative meanings, such as the superessive. The stems give information about the ground by which an action occurs, such as a flat surface, a container, or liquid. Given that new postpositions are formed by putting suffixes on relational nouns (typically body parts), the opaque stems are likely to be old, semantically bleached relational nouns. However, in some languages, nominalized verbs are beginning to take postpositionalizing suffixes. (1) Tiriyó notonna 'behind (invisible)' from noto(mï) 'to block vision' (Meira 2006) notamï + -na > notamïna > notamna > notanna > notonna Suffixes combine with a stem to give the path relative to the ground, such as ablative and allative (i.e. English 'to', 'via', 'from', 'at', etc.). Of the reconstructed suffixes, there are a number of suppletive suffixes, with multiple allative, perlative, ablative, locative, and inessive suffixes. Each suffix lexicalized with different stems in different languages; in individual languages, no modern stem is attested as being able to occur with more than one suffix of each semantic category. (2) Ye'kwana kwa-ka Waimiri ka-ka Macushi ka-ta Wayana kwa-ta 'ALL liquid' 'ALL liquid' 'ALL liquid' 'in a port' (Cáceres forthcoming) (Bruno 2003) (Abbott 1991) (Tavares 2005) Further still, some of these suffixes, such as *po, are attested as monomorphemic and also as a stem. (3) Wayana po 'on (supported)' (Tavares 2005:171) po-lo 'along on' (Tavares 2005:315) uh-po 'on top of' from upu 'head' (Tavares 2005:171) uh-po-lo 'along on top of' from upu 'head' (Tavares 2005:318)
Open Access
A Great and Spherical Zero: Collected Works
(University of Oregon, 2020) Ford, Lida Mayy Catherine
Inspired by the concept of “zeroness” as defined by the late Swiss writer Robert Walser, A Great and Spherical Zero is a collection of fiction that addresses what it means to be small, or find smallness, and how greatness is often hidden in small places. Using a variety of experimental writing techniques, the 15 stories in this collection play with the idea, posed by Walser, of zeroness. The juxtaposition of what it means to be both “great” and “zero” is central to this collection. The pieces are additionally unified by their attempt to experiment with literary form – ranging from the most extreme works of stream of consciousness representation to the more traditional stories that feature newly assertive narrative control. The collection is a representative of my inspiration from four years of undergraduate study focusing on the modernist/postmodernist literature of the 20th century, and an attempt to add my own work to the history of experimental literature.
Open Access
A Historical Approach to Originality and Replication in Visual Art
(University of Oregon, 2022) Fairman, Alana; Michlig, Christopher; Mondloch, Kate; Hagenlocher, Esther
This paper takes the reader through several foundational movements in defining originality and replication in visual art, beginning with the gilded age in Europe, continuing through modernism and postmodernism, and ending with the digital age. The notions of originality and replication have always seemed to be at odds with one another, with movements favoring one over the other but never coupling the two as essential to a meaningful artistic practice. The advancements in technology and shifts in societal values demonstrate how originality and replication shape one another and in turn shape the art movements of the time. Through investigating key artists within and between each movement, the texts of art critics and historians, and how these writings relate to legislation and the standards of what the art experience should be, a more comprehensive perspective develops about how humans relate to the original and the copy. Today, in the digital age, artists must wrestle with how they create during a time period where each image has an almost endless string of images trailing behind it; this paper seeks to offer clarity and direction for how visual artistic practices can still be original in a time where the prestige of the original is fading.
Open Access
A Historical Contextualization of Reproductive Rights and Autonomy in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
(University of Oregon, 2022) Hall, Grace; Peppis, Paul; Williams, Timothy; McWhorter, Brian
In the 1930 quintessential American modernist novel, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner tells the story of a poor family, the Bundrens, living in the Deep South. The novel follows fifteen separate narrators, including all seven family members, as the children and husband of Addie Bundren transport her body to a town forty miles away so she can be laid to rest. Particularly interesting is the novel's portrayal of gender, and more specifically reproduction, which centers around the two characters of Addie and Dewey Dell Bundren and themes of sexual and reproductive autonomy. This thesis interrogates the central theme of women’s reproductive rights and autonomy in the novel by synthesizing the disciplines of history and English. It contextualizes close readings of the text in terms of the twentieth-century national birth control and abortion movements, attitudes towards women’s reproductive rights in the US, and the lived experiences of specifically poor rural white southern women. This contextualization clarifies how the book responds and reacts to the contexts in which it was written and which it portrays, thus illuminating how the novel illustrates the convergence of literature and history. The novel depicts the oppression of women, including the abuse of Addie Bundren’s dead body by her mostly male family, criticism towards Dewey Dell’s pregnancy, and her rape, among other issues. Given Faulkner’s identity, it is possible to view him as an ally to the male oppressors in the novel. Many prior critics support this viewpoint. My thesis, however, argues that Faulkner constructs the women in the story as moral centers and uses the novel to illuminate and raise awareness for women’s reproductive struggle in this time period. The historical lens helps to support this counterargument by providing the context that shows that the portrayals of women and their oppression in this time are historically sensitive and accurate, while also avoiding falling into stereotypical or misogynistic representations of women in the Deep South. By using this historical and textual evidence, this investigation proves that Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying presents significant and progressive claims about the reproductive experiences of women in the time period, thus challenging current ideas of Faulkner’s gender politics and the assumption that his identity restricted him from producing an early feminist work. On a broader scale, the thesis shows how literature can be read as a historical document, and how history can be used to contextualize and deepen understanding of the politics and themes that appear in literature.
Open Access
A History of Muscular Dystrophy: The Biosocial Nature of Disease
(University of Oregon, 2021) Chambrose, Starla; Valiani, Arafaat; Connolly, Amy; Prazniak, Roxann
Muscular dystrophy (MD) is one of the most frequently inherited diseases, yet few science, technology, and society (STS) scholars have attempted to study it. In particular, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding how sociocultural contexts have shaped biomedical perspectives on the disease. Therefore, this thesis adopts Paul Rabinow’s notion of biosociality and traces the history of muscular dystrophy to draw conclusions about how and what kinds of knowledge about MD are produced as biological fact. The first chapter, which analyzes early descriptions of muscular dystrophy, demonstrates that modern perspectives on correct ways of knowing in turn influence who scientists credit with “discovering” MD. Similarly, the second chapter reveals how diagnostic technologies help define the boundaries of disease. Ultimately, this thesis serves as a case study to prove that science does not stand apart from culture; indeed, it is profoundly shaped by “the social.”
Open Access
A History of the Western State Hospital Sexual Offender Treatment Program
(University of Oregon, 2019) Giacoppe, John Anthony
Western State Hospital is a mental hospital in Steilacoom, Washington. In 1951, on the order of the Washington State Legislature, Western State Hospital began accepting sex offenders as inpatients. In 1958, a treatment program was developed. The program used an iconoclastic form of group therapy, wherein the offenders led their own group sessions without staff present. The program considered sexual offense the most prominent symptom of the offender’s social maladjustment and self-isolation. Therapy sought to have the offenders “teach” each other interpersonal skills, as well as to elucidate individual problems. Under the leadership of Dr. George MacDonald and Robinson Williams, M.S.W., the program developed to a multi-component modality that included work release and couples’ therapy. The program received an increasingly large percentage of the state’s sex offenders through 1975, with little corresponding oversight from the state or the wider academic world. The professional field shifted rapidly toward conditioning therapies in the late 1970’s. The program adopted these new methods slowly. Treatment costs ballooned as staff levels increased to handle the large patient population and the new methods. The public’s fears of escapes, despite their rarity, led to numerous demands that the program be closed to protect the local community. The state eventually sided with the public as costs continued to rise, and the program was formally ended in 1986. Washington replaced the program with the strictest sex-offender laws in the nation.
Open Access
A Journey to Build a Dog Walking Application
(University of Oregon, 2023) Pelky, Angela; Wills, Eric; Hinkle, Lindsay
For those who are new to the world of computer science, what are your thoughts? Is it intimidating? Is it a black box? Is it something that will eventually have robots taking over the world? Well, I am here to tell you that it is all of those things and none of those things if you look at it through the right lens. Computer science background or not, this paper is meant for any person who would like to build their own, independent business platform. The use case example of building my own dog walking web app will exemplify two key facts. First, it will provide a code template for any small business owner to use and make their own. Second, it will exemplify the asset and tool that computer science can be without having a formal education or background in the subject.
Open Access
A Lithostratigraphic Analysis of the Crooked River Mascall Formation, Central Oregon, USA
(University of Oregon, 2020) Thompson, Allie Elise
This project presents a comprehensive lithostratigraphic record of the Middle Miocene Mascall Formation deposits of the Crooked River Basin in Central Oregon, USA. The Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) covered the Crooked River Basin and much of the Pacific Northwest in the middle Miocene (17-13ma), altering the landscape and ecosystem. An analysis of the depositional history of this region in the aftermath of the CRBG eruptions allows us to explore the impact of large scale basalt flows on subsequent basin evolution in a region that lacks extensive lithostratigraphic data. University of Oregon field crews have measured stratigraphic sections in several different locations across the Crooked River basin in order to quantify the differences in depositional history across the basin and reconcile stratigraphy across multiple field expeditions. The regions we have defined for a holistic representation of the region are Twin Buttes in the northwest, Cave Basin in the northeast, Hawk Rim in the southwest, South Fork of the Crooked River – West in the southwest, and South Fork of the Crooked River – East in the southeast. They are situated between the lower boundary CRBG and upper capping Rattlesnake Ash Flow Tuff (RAFT). For each region, we have created a representative stratigraphic column, and we correlate the depositional units between these disparate areas. The Mascall Formation in the Crooked River Basin is consistent with published descriptions of the Lower Mascall Formation: mostly fine siltstone and sandstone with diatomite, ash, and chert deposits and some tuff strata (Bestland, 1998). Each of the four sites share characteristics of the Lower Mascall which suggests similar depositional environments across the sites; however, the sections vary in the thickness and representation of individual identifiable strata, suggesting variation in Mascall deposition. This project presents a refined description of the Crooked River Mascall Formation and is the first comprehensive assessment of the stratigraphy of the Crooked River Basin, which will have significant implications for understanding landscape reorganization following large-scale basaltic volcanism as well as clarifying stratigraphic relationships between the Crooked River Mascall and the type-area Mascall Formation.
Open Access
A Mad or Sad Prince? A Psychological Evaluation of One of Shakespeare's Most Famous Characters
(University of Oregon, 2023) Purdue, Haylee; Dawson, Brent; Mossberg, Barbara
Often considered one of the most influential and most quotable pieces of William Shakespeare’s repertoire, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, has stood the test of time. Analyzed by high school and college students for countless decades, Hamlet epitomizes the quintessential revenge plot, with Hamlet, himself, cast as the titular hero, who supposedly descends into madness over the course of the play. However, I disagree with this commonly accepted trajectory for Hamlet’s character. I believe that there is an alternative explanation for Hamlet’s confusing behavior during the five dramatic acts. I argue that the swift change in Hamlet’s familial, romantic, and personal lives led to an onset of depression that can shed light on why Hamlet acts the way he does throughout the play. Using literary strategies like close reading, historical contextualization, and Freudian analysis, this thesis will provide a clear addition to the Shakespearean conversation and offer an argument as to why Hamlet is neither acting mad, nor insane, but is instead depressed. To justify my claims, I will also define psychological and medicinal terminology from the 16th and 17th centuries in modern day language, as well as provide a historical contextualization to these terms. After carefully analyzing Hamlet’s relationships with the important figures in his life, it can be determined that Hamlet endured a myriad of emotions throughout the play. The most justifiable conclusion to settle on is that his changing environment impacted his life so negatively that he developed depression symptoms as a means of coping with extreme loss – loss of his family, loss of his love, and loss of himself. This investigation into Hamlet revealed that by looking past the commonly recognized labels on characters and applying a psychological, scientific lens, an alternative explanation to a character’s actions may be discovered. From a broader perspective, science and literature can be woven together to work in one, interdisciplinary field.
Open Access
A Magnetotelluric Investigation of the Cascadia Subduction Zone Plate Interface
(University of Oregon, 2017) Skidmore, Michael John-Barnett
Zones of reduced ‘Episodic Tremor and Slip’ along the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) are known to correspond to fluids anomalies at the Juan de Fuca-North American plate interface. We process Magnetotelluric models of the conductivity of the CSZ to isolate conductivity values adjacent to plate interface, as well as to compute a vertical conductivity ‘gradient’ away from the interface. We compare the average conductivity and non-volcanic tremor density in windows of various sizes along the Mantle Wedge Corner (MWC) and compute their correlation. Tremor and conductivity correlate moderately along a window extending 100km up-dip from the MWC. The correlation is weaker for windows of different sizes or those centered down-dip, which suggests a coupling mechanism along the interface up-dip of the MWC, linking conductivity and tremor occurrence. The conductivity gradient is anomalously low surrounding regions where serpentinization reactions are known to take place. Finally, we investigate the regions near crustal faults, around which tremor occurrence is suppressed. We find that conductivity anomalies do not consistently occur around these faults, and thus that the effect of these faults on tremor is likely mechanical.
Open Access
A Molecular Partnership between Cep290 and Sans Affects the Function of Primary Cilia in Body Axis Development
(University of Oregon, 2020) Culbert, Joseph Richard
Usher syndrome is the most common cause of hereditary deaf-blindness. The most severe type of Usher syndrome, type 1 (USH1), can be caused by mutations in any one of 7 genes. Individuals with USH1 are born deaf and have progressive vision loss. One of the seven causative USH1 genes, USH1G, encodes the protein Ush1g. This thesis will refer to the gene USH1G as SANS, and the protein Ush1g as Sans because of the previous works describing them as such. Sans has many protein interaction domains, enabling it to act as a scaffold for assembling multiple proteins in the same cellular location. Research conducted by our collaborators sought to identify proteins that physically interact with Sans. Using a particular domain of Sans as “bait”, they detected an interaction with the protein Cep290. Cep290 has been implicated in a range of disorders involving cellular structures called primary cilia. Cilia influence the flow of fluids through tissues or organs, including the flow of cerebrospinal fluid, and are involved in the transport of molecules between distinct parts of the cell. Diseases resulting from genetic defects in the formation or function of cilia are known collectively as ciliopathies.
Open Access
A Novel Zebrafish Mutant Reveals New Insight into the Regulation of Cilia Motility and Body Axis Formation
(University of Oregon, 2022) Craig, Samuel; Grimes, Daniel; Stabile, Carol; Miller, Adam
Motile cilia are responsible for critical functions in development, including left-right patterning and cerebrospinal fluid flow. Their motility depends on the assembly of outer dynein arms: ATPases which power ciliary beating. Defects in dynein arm function occur in Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia, a disorder affecting 1:15,000–30,000 human births. Daw1 is a cytoplasmic protein thought to be required for cilia beating by controlling import of dynein arms into cilia. Here, I use zebrafish as a model to understand Daw1 function during development and growth. I characterize daw1b1403 mutants, a new daw1 mutant line harboring a 2-amino acid deletion in a conserved region of the protein generated by CRISPR mutagenesis. Defects associated with motile cilia dysfunction in daw1b1403 mutants, including otolith abnormalities, left-right patterning defects, and abnormal body axis curvature are observed. Surprisingly, daw1b1403 mutants exhibit recovery of body curve defects later in development. Consequently, we hypothesize that Daw1 is not essential for cilia motility per se, but only for timely onset of beating over developmental timescales. To support this, live imaging of the central canal showed that the beating of motile cilia is abrogated on the first day post-fertilization (dpf) in daw1b1403 mutants but recovered to an indistinguishable level from sibling controls by the second dpf. Lastly, collaborators based in the United Kingdom have identified patients from two families with homozygous Daw1 mutations that present with situs defects. Here, I show that upon injection of Daw1 mRNA containing the human mutations, daw1b1403 mutants fail to rescue, suggesting that these mutations encode a null protein, and that the defects present in human patients, like our mutants, are the result of Daw1 abrogation. Importantly, this Daw1 model of delayed cilia motility and body straightening provides an opportunity to study how early embryos can sense, or correct, shape deformations, which is an exciting and relatively unknown aspect of developmental morphogenesis. Ultimately, understanding these processes may help inform our treatments of congenital disorders.
Metadata only
A PEER-REVIEW OF PEER-REVIEW: ANALYZING DIFFERING METHODOLOGIES ACROSS MEDIA STUDIES AND COMMUNICATION JOURNALS
(University of Oregon, 2024) Tokos, Lauren; Soderlund, Gretchen
The academic disciplines of media studies and communication broadly analyze media’s social, political, cultural, and industrial effects – both practically and theoretically. While many media studies and communication scholars discuss their research in mainstream media, scholarly publications are the primary mechanism used to disseminate academic research findings. This project analyzes the journal publishing ecosystem in media studies and communication, focusing on journals’ peer-review methods and relationships with governing entities (i.e. corporate publishers, learned societies, etc.). Semi-structured, phenomenological interviews are the main method of investigation for this project, followed by thematic coding using the qualitative data analysis platform, Dedoose. Eleven, 60–90-minute interviews were conducted between November 2023 and February 2024, yielding ten transcripts (one interviewee declined to be recorded) and extensive field notes. Participants are editors at generalized and specialized journals in media studies and communication; 73% of journals interviewed are owned by corporate publishers, while 27% are owned by not-for-profit publishing entities. Additionally, of the 73% of journals owned by corporate publishers, half were affiliated with learned societies, while the other half were not. Of the 23% of journals owned by not-for-profit publishing entities, 18% were affiliated with learned societies, while 9% were not. The associative demographics of
Open Access
A Place to Be: Ibasho and Community Comfort in the TV Series Midnight Diner
(University of Oregon, 2023) O'Brien, Laurel; Freedman, Alisa; Jacobsen, Trond
This thesis will discuss the concept of ibasho, "a place to be," as it appears in the beloved television and Netflix show Midnight Diner (Shin’ya Shokudō, 2009). In my research, I examine stories of the many patrons of one small diner in an alleyway in Tokyo, who come together over nostalgic foods and share the burdens of the difficulties they each face. I argue that spaces like the Midnight Diner exemplify ibasho, or “places to be,” which offer community support and provide warmth, acceptance, inclusion, growth, and healing to troubled souls in a fast-paced and complicated world. This ibasho modeled in Midnight Diner bears relevance to us now as an example of deeply supportive community. In this thesis, I analyze depictions of ibasho in Midnight Diner, showing the value it has to offer us as we look for ways to connect with one another in our lives.
Open Access
A Portfolio of Criminal Justice Reform Work Focused on Clemency and Senate Bill 819
(University of Oregon, 2023) Eisenbach-Budner, Tamir; Leete, Laura; Chari, Anita; Kaplan, Aliza
Due to the expansion of tough-on-crime policies such as Measure 11, Oregon’s incarceration rate has more than doubled since 1995. However, deeper understanding has emerged of the neuroscience, and profound potential for rehabilitation, of young offenders; the corrosive, lifelong impacts of criminal legal involvement; and the racism and dysfunction that pervades the criminal legal system. Additionally, many are rethinking the retributive model of criminal justice in favor of rehabilitation and restoration. Reevaluation of past criminal convictions and sentences that takes these developments into account is crucial. Two mechanisms for such reevaluation within Oregon are the governor’s clemency power and Senate Bill 819, which allows district attorneys and defendants to jointly move for a reduction in the defendant’s sentence. This thesis presents a portfolio of my work with Lewis and Clark Law School’s Criminal Justice Reform Clinic in these areas. I have created writing guides for pardon and commutation clemency petitions; provided constructive, in-depth feedback on sixty-one such petitions submitted by incarcerated people; authored a pardon petition that was personally granted by Governor Brown in June 2021; and authored two Senate Bill 819 petitions that are currently under review. My aim in this work is to make a tangible impact on the lives of the Clinic’s clients and support the broader criminal justice reform movement within Oregon.
Open Access
A PRELIMINARY EXPLORATION OF RESEARCH ON ANXIETY MANAGEMENT TOOLS
(University of Oregon, 2022) Kriska, Nolan; Pennefather, Jordan; Kerewsky, Shoshana; Jacobsen, Trond
This thesis is a preliminary exploration of research on anxiety and anxiety management interventions. The future direction of anxiety research should be to make anxiety management interventions more available and improve their efficacy (Robinson, 2013; Craske, 2014). The goal of this thesis is to simplify a holistic set of techniques for managing anxiety so that they can be helpful to students at the University of Oregon. Increasing the availability of anxiety management interventions via video, and their efficacy (a therapy's ability to effectively manage anxiety) through combining multiple interventions, is how my thesis fits into the future direction of anxiety management research. I hypothesize that a sample is impacted by anxiety and that a 10-minute video summary of a holistic set of anxiety management tools will improve the sample's use, knowledge, and confidence in these tools. The anxiety management methods I will cover include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure Therapy (ERP), and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). I will examine elements of these anxiety management interventions, their effectiveness, availability, and discuss how they could be helpful to people without an anxiety disorder diagnosis.

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