Since 1904, when the first voter-sponsored bill appeared on the ballot in Oregon, the frequency of initiatives and referenda has greatly increased, most especially over the last 40 years. While there were only 98 bills voted on nation-wide between 1960 and 1969, over 370 initiatives made it onto state ballots between 2000 and 2009. My research examines several underlying causes of this rising frequency in order to help understand trends in the increasing use of direct democracy. Previous work has focused on the increased participation by moneyed interest groups who use paid petitioners to circulate legislation; however, I am proposing a new, original theory which connects political alienation and dissatisfaction of representative democracy to increased participation in direct democracy. I have built an original dataset which will combine measures of polarization within government, public trust in Congress, and the number of initiatives and referenda throughout the multiple states in which they appear. With this dataset, I ran multivariate regressions to analyze statistical significance in the relationships between these variables. I expect to find that as political polarization in Congress increases, people will lose faith in traditional modes of representative democracy. I further hypothesize that as trust in government decreases, people are more likely to turn to modes of direct democracy to instill change in government, therefore increasing participation in the initiative and referendum process. If my hypothesis is correct, my research would serve as a tool for political scientists to use to predict the rise or fall in the political activity of voters, the implications of which could influence timing of legislation, outreach efforts, and a number of other participation-related issues.

Himalayan adventure travel is a burgeoning industry in some mountainous regions of Nepal, India, and the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People‘s Republic of China. The development of a trekking and expedition mountaineering infrastructure has created employment opportunities in remote areas and allowed visitors from around the world to embark on life-changing explorations to some of the planet‘s most unique destinations. However, with the rapid, uneven, and largely unregulated growth of this industry have come environmental and resource challenges, the creation of new economic and social arrangements, and renewed questions of equity and safety. Despite—or perhaps because of—the prominence of Himalayan adventure travel in the popular consciousness, the historical, social, political, and economic drivers responsible for maintaining and reproducing the current paradigm remain poorly understood. The industry‘s growing pains are highlighted by the mounting human toll of disasters in the mountains, most recently the earthquake that destroyed Everest Base Camp in April 2015. Although the proximate cause of these disasters were natural events, growing unrest suggests that their ultimate causes are in fact chronic and unnatural. My research is based on eight months of fieldwork in the Himalaya and combines analysis of theoretical, historical, and contemporary sources with personal experience as a Himalayan expedition leader. I argue that the current Himalayan adventure travel paradigm is unsustainable, and that only a profound reimagining of sociopolitical relationships—those between the state, local and global civil society actors, and adventure travel practitioners and participants—will allow it to continue. My findings demonstrate that recent developments reflect longstanding systemic problems and that current events may serve as a catalyst for previously underrepresented stakeholders in adventure travel to translate their growing assertiveness into meaningful and lasting solutions.

The Joseph Mathia Diaries Project, part of the Newbook Digital Text Project, is a research initiative started in 2012 and dedicated to the application of innovative digital technologies towards the multi-media publication of 16 original diaries and 30 transcriptions of Joseph Mathia Svoboda's original diaries. The transformation of these primary sources into physical or digital media consists of five phases: transcribing, editing, analyzing, encoding and formatting each text; with each and every one of them characterized as needing of extensive human resources. These resources come in form of undergraduate and graduate student interns; the undergraduate community being the most represented. The project almost entirely depends on this segment of the student body due to reduced funding but most importantly because we strongly believe that, by empowering our interns to assume positions of responsibility in lower and mid-level management and to participate in cross-function collaboration within the five phases of the project, we provide our students with invaluable experiences that prepare them for future successful professional and academic endeavors. Through interviews, surveys and other internal forms of evaluation, this research project aims to understand the process through which students get involved with the Newbook Digital Text Project, the nature of their work, the relation and relevance of this work to their area of study or interests and the outcome of this research internship in terms of skills and experience gained from becoming involved with undergraduate research. Consequently, this research project aims to demonstrate to the university community the high level of innovation, impact and collaboration the undergraduate student community can bring into traditional scholarly research.

In September of 2014, 43 Rural Teacher College students disappeared as part of a series of human rights violations that brought unprecedented global attention to the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teacher College in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. Within the context of these events, this research centers on the student-driven advocacy that emerges across Mexican Rural Teacher Colleges today. These Colleges historically serve as an avenue for young men and women from humble, rural, or farmworking backgrounds to train as elementary and bilingual educators. Rural Teacher Colleges emerged from the spirit of the Mexican Revolution, and they have long weathered disenfranchisement, including accusations of being nests for communists and school closures in the 1960s. The aim of this study is to illuminate how Rural Teacher College students are continuously advocating for school maintenance, student essentials, and education programs. This research identifies student-driven advocacy strategies, which may exist beyond calls for justice for the missing 43 students. The study is based on three primary questions: What are Rural Teacher College students advocating for? Which strategies do students engage in to promote those issues? What are the benefits and challenges of different advocacy mediums? This study draws from semi-structured interviews with one Rural Teacher College student. Interviews are transcribed and translated, and they lend a student perspective and voice to research analysis. Further, an online document analysis examines social media statements and Rural Teacher College webpages. Preliminary results indicate students face numerous barriers in maintaining consistent educational opportunities. The study serves as a platform to highlight how students organize themselves in innovative ways. Further, it has implications for understanding the political and social justice consciousness attached to a Rural Teacher College education. This study will influence future research on the issue of student-led advocacy and the development of civic engagement via online platforms.

Fostering students’ motivation and interest in higher education composition classes is vital to sustain student engagement. However, short-term motivation does not necessarily determine long-term success; recent research has found that an individual’s level of grit plays a significant role in his or her long-term success (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). To investigate the role of grit in writing classrooms, we are exploring how writing instructors can foster students’ grit for a greater chance of long-term success. Because Duckworth et al. (2007) consider interest and effort to be crucial factors in grit, we chose to examine whether or not service-learning (SL) can foster students’ grit, as SL been shown to increase student engagement in the past. Using Duckworth et al.’s eight-question grit scale, this project investigated the impact of SL on the grit of students in basic writing classes at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, comparing three SL classes (Group 1) and two non-SL classes (Group 2). Data was analyzed using t-tests to compare the average grit scores between the groups at mid- and post-semester. Although results indicated no significant correlation between grit and SL, this study suggests that grit stems more from internal rather than external motivators. Thus, this research can potentially open up a conversation about factors and influences that affect an individual’s grit.

In a country that provides free health care for patients living with HIV/AIDS, China has not recognized a growing health crisis: hepatitis C (HCV). In Yunnan Province alone, 77.7% of intravenous drug users (IDU) are co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C. While these patients can obtain free treatment for HIV, they cannot do so to treat their hepatitis C infection, a viral disease that leads to liver failure. Recent trends indicate that more co-infected patients are dying of HCV than HIV due to treatment inaccessibility. This study investigates the severity of HCV in China, the barriers to obtaining treatment, and what alternatives exist for patients infected by HCV. Over the course of one month, formal interviews were conducted with 18 intravenous drug users, two medical doctors, and one traditional Chinese medicine doctor. The answers were analyzed to compare the experience of patients to that of doctors and how this correlated with the shortfalls in HCV treatment accessibility. There are four findings which point to the underlying causes. First, there is a gap between what medical doctors assume to what patients experience. While doctors claimed that HCV treatment is highly successful, not a single IDU who was interviewed had successfully completed the regimen. Second, finances and social stigma serve as the largest barriers to obtaining treatment. Third, in order to cope with these barriers, patients find emotional reprieve in community support and alternative treatments. Fourth, the solution requires changes from both the Chinese health care system and foreign pharmaceutical companies. The goal of this research is to raise awareness about the gaps in knowledge and efforts surrounding hepatitis C in order to create a sense of urgency to fill them.

Consistently, young adults (ages 18-24), hereafter referred to as "youth" are slow to get involved in the governance process. Rates of engagement in the political and governance process are consistently lower among those with intersections of marginality (e.g. race, gender, level of education, etc.). Two components which impact a young person's activism and connection to civic and political engagement are political education and socialization. How a person is introduced to the political process and how their interactions with their community had helped to instill, or failed to instill, notions of democratic citizenry. The way a person is taught to engage with the political process has significant implications for an engaged citizenry, and there are educational and social systems which work to promote or discourage such democratic involvement, among marginalized groups. This research provides statistical comparisons which allow for quantitative analysis of participation rates among diverse youth, and addtionally provides a qualitative examination of constructions of citizenship, socialization and education, which might discourage participation in traditional democracy for youth and other marginalized groups. Variations in how educational institutions teach about youth political engagement impact how involved they become in their own governance. Pedagogy and constructions of citizenship play a major role in not only whether youth engage, but how they engage in the political process. While shifts in socialization may not be achievable through public policy solutions, implications of this research could offer alternatives and solutions to the problem of youth political participation, to both existing educational institutions and policymakers, when considering youth engagement in the governance process.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is a common chronic viral infection that can cause significant complications in bone marrow transplant (BMT) recipients and other immunocompromised people. Using stored serum from BMT patients who were CMV negative but had a CMV positive donor, we have identified a group of patients who appear to have had self-limited infection, where DNA from CMV was found in their serum then resolved without therapy. It is thought that donor-derived, entry specific neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) bind to the virus and prevent entry into cells and infection. In this study, we measured the CMV NAb activity in patients with self-limited infection and compared this to similar patients who developed chronic infection. Specifically, serially diluted patient sera was incubated with a standard quantity of CMV, and the relative decrease of cellular infection was assessed. Our CMV strain contains a green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene that is expressed by infected cells. The virus-serum mixture was incubated with human epithelial cells for one hour, and then washed away. On day 7, we measured the fluorescence emitted by infected cells and constructed a standard curve to compare the fluorescence of the cells with sera to those without virus and those without serum. We calculated the serum concentration required to neutralize 50% of the virus (IC-50). Because NAbs prevent CMV entry into cells, those with self-limited infection may have greater NAb activity (i.e. IC-50) than patients who develop infection. We have measured the IC-50 in serum from 7 healthy donors. These preliminary data indicated that people with high NAb activity have a log₂IC-50 of 9-11, where CMV negative people have a log₂IC-50 <3. We are now measuring the NAb activity of patient samples. If NAb activity is important for prevention of infection, this may aid development of CMV vaccines and therapeutics.

 The public consultation on “Equality between Women and Men in the EU," launched by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, received an astounding 4,896 contributions in 2015. In comparison, most public consultations garner less than 500 replies. Although each of the 28 European Union (EU) Member States contributed, 51.7% of the organizations were based in Germany, and 47.5% of contributing individuals lived in Germany. While this level of involvement merits attention by itself, a substantial group of individuals in Germany answered in an eerily similar negative manner to all questions of the consultation. Their responses were highly critical of gender equality policies and denounced action at an EU-level. Why did this group of individuals in Germany, in contrast to the other reponses of Germany organizations and individuals from other countries, react in this negative manner? Moreover, apparent from the patterned responses and almost-verbatim comments, how did this group with anti-feminist tendencies coordinate and mobilize? Our research examines this consultation on gender equality among several others addressing female genital mutiliation, paternity leave, and gender imbalance on corporate boards to analyze potential collaborative networks between European civil society. To organize our data, we code consultation responses into matrices, which allows us to view patterns that could indicate occuring collbaborations. From here, we attempt to unearth the motivations behind and intricancies of these mobilizing networks. Ultimately, our research seeks to explain this uniquely German anti-feminist phenomenon within the public consultation context.