Mass incarceration has disproportionally impacted communities of color over the past 41 years. Indeed, policies that are currently operating as a result of the “War on Drugs” have created large racial disparities in drug convictions. For an example, despite research suggesting that Blacks and Whites use marijuana at similar rates, Blacks have been convicted at a higher rate. Many proponents of criminal justice reform argue that just as certain policies have led to the creation of racial disparities in drug conviction, the creation of new policies and laws might also be able to reduce or eliminate these disparities. For this research project, I use longitudinal data of all Washington State convictions between 2000 and 2015 and ordinary least squares regression analysis to examine the association between the 2012 decriminalization of marijuana in Washington State, I-502, and in drug conviction rates by race. I also include a series of controls including: year of conviction, sex, county and prior convictions to test the robustness of this association. In particular, I am interested in understanding if racial disparities in drug convictions decreased post the implementation of marijuana legalization in Washington state. My results suggest that marijuana legalization leads to decreased disparities in drug conviction rates for Blacks. The overall lower conviction rates for all types of drugs may have been produced by the lessening of police contact with Blacks in Washington State for suspicion of marijuana possession.

Today's contemporary debate over the broken immigration system in the United States has placed politicians and policy makers at every level of government in a legal gridlock. It is estimated that 11 million undocumented immigrants reside in the U.S., and that at least a fifth of these are young people who have lived in this country since childhood. Of these 2.1 million youth nationwide, about 65,000 graduate from U.S. high schools every year and an even smaller percentage of these students go on to pursue a college education. President Obama's enactment of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012 and its expansion in 2014 provided undocumented youth who meet certain criteria with deporation relief and temporary work permits, and with that a potential new outlook on their future prospects. Although there is a growing body of literature on undocumented youth's self-perceptions in American society and the challenges they face in their transition into adulthood, there is little academic work that focuses on undocumented students who have entered college environments. For this research project, I intend to capture the experiences of undocumented college students as they navigate through the university landscape. This process will include an ethnographic survey and semi-structured interviews with 18-30 undocumented university students at the University of Washington. My sampling strategy will involve contacting pro-immigrant groups, organizations, and clubs on campus to establish a pool of potential subjects in addition to snowball sampling. The results of these in-depth interviews and surveys will provide a unique insight into the lives of students and will contribute an additional narrative that will expand the body of knowledge on the subject at hand. The impact of DACA will be explored as well as its implications on undocumented students' educational trajectories and future aspirations. 

The scope of this project is to invite an expert to make a speech focused on water mismanagement and global climate change and to conduct pre-speech and post-speech surveys to explore the effects of the speech on knowledge and attitude change regarding these two issues. One common assumption among those combating climate change is that providing the public with expert knowledge on the subject will change their opinions and behaviors. This project tests whether that assumption is correct by measuring the impact of a single speech on the knowledge and attitudes of college-aged students. For the application of my research, I planned and organized the event inviting 300 students to listen to a 1-hour speech delivered live by a Senior member of the United Nations on climate change and global water issues, and conduct pre-speech and post-speech surveys that were administered to determine what effect, if any, the speech had on the students’ knowledge and attitudes about the topics. 197 pre-surveys were completed while 130 attendees were present at the event and 60 attendees completed the post-survey. The post-survey results are in the process of cross comparison with the initial pre-survey. I hypothesized that the results speech measured by the pre-surveys and post-surveys will show significant positive change in both knowledge and attitude change. The implications of my research results will be used to suggest broader implications for scientific and policy communication to a lay audience in order to continuously educate and successfully convey knowledge and information while advocating for positive change in attitude to further advance our efforts in solving the global threat of climate change and water management.