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2025 Commencement College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Morning Ceremony Video
No full textVideo presentation of the PSU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Commencement morning ceremony, held June 15, 2025, at the Viking Pavilion at Portland State University.
The departments that participated in this ceremony included Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, Complex Systems, Environmental Science & Management, Geography, Geology, Mathematics & Statistics, Physics, Psychology, and Speech & Hearing Sciences. The interdisciplinary major that participated in this ceremony was Science.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/commencement_2020s/1018/thumbnail.jp
What Kinds of Experiences and Activities Contribute to College Students\u27 Sense of Purpose? A Mixed-Methods Study
No full textFor many young people, attending college is a core marker of the transition to emerging adulthood. Some students thrive in college while others become lost, confused, or seem to be just marking their time. Some researchers have hypothesized that one thing that can help students take advantage of their college experience is if they are firmly anchored in their own life goals and sense of purpose. The primary goal of this study is to contribute to knowledge about the role of a sense of purpose in college students\u27 development, including not only its potential benefits to their academic functioning and wellbeing, but also the experiences and activities that students find helpful to constructing a sense of purpose. This mixed-methods study is focused on the role of a sense of purpose in college students\u27 academic and psychological lives, and especially on the kinds of activities and experiences that colleges themselves can provide that support the development of purpose. This study emphasizes the student perspective and their voices and investigates the functioning of purpose for specific subgroups of students.
The study is organized around the following two questions: Do college students with a greater sense of purpose also show higher levels of academic functioning and well-being? What experiences and activities contribute to the development of a sense of purpose? As part of the undergraduate assessment of the Psychology department at a large, urban, primarily non-residential, public research university in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, information from 560 students attending psychology classes were collected during the Winter quarter of the 2023-2024 academic year. Students completed a newly designed measure of purpose, four measures of academic functioning, three measures of well-being, a checklist of literature- and practice-informed potentially purpose-promotive activities, and answered the open-ended question: What experiences have you had at PSU that have been the most helpful for developing your purpose?
Quantitative data were analyzed by conducting simple regressions and frequency counts. Results indicated that sense of purpose is significantly and positively associated with students\u27 grade point average, credits earned, intent to persist, perceived value of their education, sense of community, personal growth, and meaningful life engagement. The most frequently endorsed purpose-promotive activities were talking about purpose with friends and family, meeting with an academic advisor, volunteering, and taking a job and/or personality assessment. Qualitative responses were analyzed using a version of thematic analysis known as Template Analysis. Results indicated that there are many kinds of activities and experiences that students found to be helpful for developing their purposes, and that these processes are happening throughout many different places across the university. Findings from this study have implications for researchers, advisors, faculty, and university administrators
Transit-Oriented Development and Affordable Housing: Lessons from Portland
No full textThe seminar will cover surveys of residents at recently built Transit-Oriented Developments (TODs) focused on affordable housing sites. This study builds off of an ongoing partnership between Portland State University and the Portland Metro regional government to understand the travel choices of people who move to recently constructed Metro supported TODs. Since 2018, Metro has focused their TOD investment on affordable housing; this survey, conducted in 2024, offers a lens into how TOD works for these low-income Portlanders, how their travel differs from prior TOD residents, and what opportunities exist to improve the TOD - affordable housing combination.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/trec_seminar/1267/thumbnail.jp
Psilocybin and Death Anxiety: A Dual-Mechanism Approach to Existential Distress
No full textThis literature review looks at how psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, can help people deal with death anxiety; the deep fear of dying or losing control that shows up in lots of mental health struggles. While traditional treatments like SSRIs and talk therapy work for some people, they don\u27t always get to the root of the problem. Psilocybin works differently. It changes brain activity, especially in networks tied to repetitive, self-focused thinking, as well as creates powerful, emotional experiences that help people rethink how they see life and death. This paper covers recent research showing how one or two sessions of psilocybin-assisted therapy can lead to long-lasting anxiety relief, especially for people facing terminal illnesses. It also attempts to explain why the therapy works, what it feels like, and who it could possibly help in the future, including people without a diagnosis who still struggle with existential fear. Overall, the goal is to show that psilocybin offers more than just symptom relief; it helps people reconnect with themselves and find meaning, even in the face of death
Momentum Transport in Heterogeneous Forest Canopies
Get PDFThis study investigates the impact of spatial heterogeneity on momentum transport within forest canopies through wind tunnel experiments using 1:200 scale forest models. The models, crafted from 10 Pores Per Inch reticulated foam, emulate a leaf area index of 5.3 and include alternating patches and gaps of various sizes. Statistical results of the mean velocity profiles and velocity standard deviations show that the canopies develop a mixing layer. By employing lacunarity analysis to quantify spatial heterogeneity, we establish that the heterogeneity scale effectively represents variations in canopy height. The success of the lacunarity analysis as a metric is particularly noteworthy, providing a robust and practical measure of heterogeneity that can be easily applied in future research. Control volume analysis reveals that horizontal and vertical momentum advection terms rise as canopy heterogeneity increases, emphasizing its critical role in heterogeneous canopies and the possibility of describing this role using the lacunarity scale. The gaps also give rise to pressure terms through the local pressure gradient at each pattern. The study highlights the higher influence of gap size over heterogeneity scale on momentum flux. These insights contribute to improved parameterization of heterogeneous canopies in numerical weather prediction models, aiding in better representation of sub-grid scale processes and enhancing our understanding of canopy-atmosphere interactions
Between Fire and Water: Miyazawa Kenji\u27s Reimagining of Opposites in \u3ci\u3eGinga tetsudō no yoru\u3c/i\u3e
Get PDFThis thesis explores how Japanese writer Miyazawa Kenji playfully uses opposites and binaries to create thematic richness in his famous children\u27s story Ginga tetsudō no yoru (Night on the Milky Way Railroad). Despite being a children\u27s book, the text works with mature themes such as loneliness, grief, and purpose, themes which are elevated through Kenji\u27s idiosyncratic stylings. Through a close reading of the original Japanese text, the author isolates moments where Kenji conveys his Nichiren Buddhist worldview as part of his proselytizing mission, as well as moments that increase thematic richness, resulting in a multifaceted text that continues to puzzle, challenge, and engage readers nearly one hundred years after its writing. Kenji treats human constructed binaries as insignificant and hindrances to productive social connection, while at the same time treating pairing of opposites in the natural world as ordinary and beautiful, allowing for creation of a galactic adventure composed of altogether familiar components, and a worldview that can subsume elements as disparate as Christianity and paleontology
Urban Wildlife in Your Backyard: Community Experience and Impacts with Coyotes (Canis latrans), Outdoor Cats (Felis catus), and Songbirds
No full textGreenspaces in urban areas can be inspiring or problematic to people as well as vital to the animals living in or moving through them. The behavior and landscape design of people neighboring greenspaces can also affect not only species presence but interactions among species. The Urban Wildlife Information Network (UWIN) has created a methodology for cities to record urban species and share their data with others across the globe. UWIN Portland currently has 33 camera traps within greenspaces spanning a 49 kilometer transect. Using these UWIN-Portland camera traps, we identified ten greenspace communities to conduct a survey gauging residents experiences, interactions, and attitudes towards coyotes (Canis latrans) and the outdoor domestic cat (Felis catus) aiming to answer the questions “can human-wildlife attitudes be predicted using lived experiences and backyard attributes?”. The social surveys consisted of twelve analytical questions and three demographic questions. Questions included what and when their experience with the species was, how they view wildlife, and actions / items within their yards (i.e. allowed their cats outdoors, have a garden, etc.). 100 surveys were distributed (1000 in total) at each site within one mile of the focal sites, and 245 were returned. Preliminary results show a negative relationship between attitude and actions in yards. E.g., those in agreement with utilitarian attitudes carried out actions in connection with stewardship and bio-centric attitudes. Results will be used to aid in urban greenspace management strategies by exhibiting how lived experiences can be used to predict attitudes, and thus actions surrounding greenspaces
Managing Reed Canary Grass in Wetlands with Minimal Environmental Impact
No full textReed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) is a ubiquitous plant species that degrades wetlands by forming monocultures throughout the Pacific Northwest. Applications of glyphosate-based pesticides are effective and commonly applied at a rate of 2% with an appropriate surfactant for the management of reed canary grass. However, the use of glyphosate has become controversial in recent years over concerns of the potential harm to humans, native vegetation and freshwater ecosystems. Additionally, the costs and time required to effectively manage reed canary grass continue to increase placing additional pressure on project budgets. This study assesses the effectiveness of various applications of glyphosate-based pesticide formulations in managing reed canary grass populations using high resolution multispectral imagery acquired with unmanned aerial systems. A set of six glyphosate-based formulations ranging from 0.5% to 2% with and without a water buffering agent, or kicker, were tested in a complete randomized design with five replications at Jackson Bottom in Hillsboro, OR. The images were captured biweekly during the growing season from April 2019 to October 2020, leading to 29 orthoimages. Repeated measures analysis suggests no significant difference between the highest (2%) and lowest (0.5%) glyphosate concentrations tested in managing reed canary grass, indicating that each concentration is equally effective. Moreover, we found that the kicker provided no significant contribution in managing reed canary grass. Therefore, to reduce the potential harm to humans, native vegetation and freshwater ecosystems while controlling treatment costs, we suggest using minimal concentrations of glyphosate with appropriate adjuvants when managing reed canary grass
Kellogg Creek Student Macroinvertebrate Monitoring Program
No full textThe Kellogg Creek Student Macroinvertebrate Monitoring Program is a community science initiative launched in 2024 by the North Clackamas Watersheds Council in partnership with North Clackamas School District classrooms. The program supports the Kellogg Creek Restoration and Community Enhancement Project, a multifaceted restoration project happening in Downtown Milwaukie that will remove Kellogg Dam and create a publicly accessible natural area within Milwaukie. The Kellogg Creek Student Macroinvertebrate Monitoring Program uses data collected by students to evaluate changes in the water and habitat quality in lower Kellogg Creek following the removal of Kellogg Dam using “before-after-control-impact” (BACI) experimental design. Students use non-lethal community science field methods for sampling stream macroinvertebrates developed by Dr. Patrick Edwards with Portland State University (PSU), and participate in two in-class lessons led by the Council. The monitoring program has completed two seasons of pre-implementation monitoring, with surveys continuing seasonally (spring and fall) through construction and post-restoration monitoring. In this presentation we discuss lessons learned from the first two seasons of monitoring, how professional development opportunities were integrated into the program, and ways in which the Council prioritizes equity and addresses potential barriers students may face to participation
Planting a Miyawaki Forest in Southeast Portland: Process and Results
No full textOver the course of three days in the summer of 2021, Portland, Oregon, experienced an unprecedented heat wave, with temperatures climbing to 116 degrees Fahrenheit and casualties reaching 54. The event, the worst natural disaster in the history of the city, introduced new climatological nomenclature, including heat trap, heat island, heat dome, and even heat inequity, given that the inhabitants of affluent neighborhoods with less asphalt, more green space, and greater tree cover were spared the worst of the disaster. The search for the perfect urban forest capable of mitigating, if not helping to avoid altogether, future catastrophes led a team at the Oregon Institute for Creative Research to Japan, where in the 1970s, the botanist Akira Miyawaki introduced a planting methodology characterized by high density, biodiversity, native species, small footprint (some Miyawaki Forests are no larger than a tennis court), and an extraordinary growth rate far outpacing forests planted using conventional methods. In March 2024, in collaboration with staff and students at the Franciscan Montessori Earth School, OICR planted an inaugural Miyawaki Forest consisting of over 320 trees, shrubs, and ground cover in a 1000-square-foot space. Today, almost exactly one year later, we present to you the results of the experiment