Uploads from Portland State University Official Flickr Site, tagged profiles

Susan Lenski

nobody@flickr.com (Portland State University Official Flickr Site) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:47 -0800

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READING UP - Boosting teen literacy.

The idea behind adolescent literacy is both simpler and more complex than it sounds. Think back to when you learned to read. Now think about the difference between Goodnight Moon and a 50-page journal article outlining the historical, political and economic factors at play in Iraq.

Just as there is higher-level math, there is higher-level reading, Education Professor Susan Lenski says. Developing advanced comprehension skills starts with a basic belief that reading is a thinking process. Knowing how to read sentences isn’t the same as reading with a critical eye, questioning the basis and perspective of the writer, says Lenski.

“The biggest thing we need to do with adolescent literacy is to have students determine the credibility of the text,” Lenski says. “We want students to use information in the text to transform their thinking, to develop a logical argument and use evidence from a variety of texts to support their point of view.”

Adolescents’ minds may be as messy as their rooms, but they are explorers at heart. And what they learn about critical analysis in these formative years can impact their lives and opportunities down the road.

Lenski and the teachers she trains at Portland State want to give teens more than a how-to guide to reading. They want to teach them the tools to understanding the world around them.

www.pdx.edu/ci/

Harold Briggs

nobody@flickr.com (Portland State University Official Flickr Site) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:44 -0800

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EQUAL FOOTING - Putting science in social work.

When Harold Briggs met a foster mom struggling to parent a pregnant teenager with bipolar disorder, he took an unusual step. Over the phone, the professor of Social Work taught the mother social work theory and evidence-based practice so that she could design a strategy to apply to her foster daughter.

The case study, published in 2009, illustrates Briggs’ passion for combining science, cultural knowledge and collaboration. Through his work with Multnomah County, the state of Oregon, and at the University of Chicago, Briggs has become known for his work teaching skills to work with people who are at risk—within families, child welfare and juvenile justice.

Though children of color make up just 10 percent of Oregon’s population, nearly 20 percent of all children in foster care are minorities. Minority children in foster care tend to stay in the system longer than white children.

Often, experts have focused on trying to delineate the source of racism and oppression, puzzling over whether it originates from inside or outside a system such as child welfare. Briggs’ work punctures the false dichotomy. “Each of those systems comes from culture and culture comes from them,” Briggs says. “Neither system is an island unto itself.”

Accepting this allows the focus of research to shift toward developing best practices for addressing the impact of structural racism on individuals.

Social work fits a pattern Briggs set early in life of helping others and making connections in a childhood touched by poverty and homelessness. “Social work chose me,” Briggs says. “I didn’t choose it. My mom says I was called to it.”

Jian Wang

nobody@flickr.com (Portland State University Official Flickr Site) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:46 -0800

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BEYOND THE STACKS - Curating digital library collections.

From a sparsely decorated office tucked away on an upper floor of Smith Union, the head of electronic and continuing resources oversees a trove of over 60,000 electronic serials. By building, organizing, and maintaining PSU Library's collections, Jian Wang ensures that students and faculty, whether on campus or online, can easily access the latest innovations on their topics, from criminology to social work, medicine to visual arts.

Wang's motivation logs on to the library website each day: PSU students.

"I know how students feel if they cannot find information," she says. "When I was in school and could not find an article, journal or book, I felt very frustrated. We want to give students the best chance of success."

For many, round-the-clock access is essential to that success. Whether updating electronic journals or troubleshooting an issue with inter library loans, Wang and her staff work on problems nearly 24/7.

That constant demand for information has forever linked libraries and technology.

“Libraries and information technologies have to have a collaborative partnership in order to best serve students and campus and faculty," Wang says.

Of course, the hottest tech tool is lifeless without a deep appreciation for the boundary-busting, mind-expanding power of knowledge. That's what makes librarians even more indispensable in today's information age, Wang says.

library.pdx.edu

Melissa Appleyard

nobody@flickr.com (Portland State University Official Flickr Site) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:48 -0800

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TEAM SCIENCE - Merging disciplines to enhance innovation.

In the cutting-edge facilities of a semiconductor manufacturer or the biomedical labs of a leading university program, nanotechnology is the new frontier. Innovation happens at the molecular level. But it also has to happen at the interpersonal level.

Melissa Appleyard, Ames Professor in the Management of Innovation and Technology in the PSU School of Business Administration, is researching how experts in these enterprises, coming from disparate backgrounds find ways of working together.

"These types of interdisciplinary teams can have problems cooperating due to differing terminologies, conceptual models, and approaches to empirical testing," Appleyard says. At the same time, "You wonder how much they rub off on each other, and start asking questions that have a broader application."

To answer that question, Appleyard is studying scientists working at eight nanomedicine development centers funded by the National Institutes of Health. There, scientists and engineers collaborate on medical applications such as developing microscopic devices that may be able to reverse age-related macular degeneration, which otherwise leads to blindness.

Her goal is to identify those scientists who've developed what she calls a "knowledge meshing capability": an ability to merge different fields into "something quite revolutionary."

Appleyard has already studied the way developers with different skill-sets interact in industrial settings. For example, she has studied those team dynamics at Intel, where advanced processing technology requires expertise in chemistry, physics, and engineering. "Optimal ways of managing interdisciplinary teams matter a lot to companies like Intel," says Appleyard.

Professor, Business

Kris Henning

nobody@flickr.com (Portland State University Official Flickr Site) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:45 -0800

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TACTICAL RESPONSE - Cracking cases with databases.

Of the 5,000 reports of domestic violence that Portland police receive each year, the domestic violence unit is only able to investigate about 500. So how do they choose which cases to take on?

Work by Criminology and Criminal Justice professor Kris Henning is helping inform those difficult decisions.

Without additional information, police often pursue suspects who are the easiest to find, rather than the most dangerous or those most likely to revictimize their intimate partner.

By contrast, decisions made later in the criminal justice system rely on proven research that assesses a criminal’s likelihood of recidivism. Offenders with personality dysfunctions, those with an extensive criminal history outside the home, and those who are abusing alcohol or drugs are at significantly higher risk to commit more crimes. Studies have proven that focusing our limited correctional supervision and treatment resources on offenders at highest risk results in better outcomes as a system.

"We need to incorporate this same objective decision-making earlier in the criminal justice process," Henning says.

To address this, in 2007 he redesigned the incident reporting form used by Portland police, adding new questions and including a special interview section to allow for victim input. Henning also built a database that assembles information from the previous day's domestic violence reports, and ranks suspects according to the likelihood of future violence. That enables shift sergeants to better and more quickly respond to the highest risk situations.

In the three years that the Portland Police domestic violence unit has used the system, case clearance rates have risen slightly. High-risk offenders are often responsible for several open cases. A single arrest may lead to solving many crimes. Henning and Sgt. Greg Stewart from the Portland Police Bureau have had inquiries from other law enforcement agencies looking to improve their procedures.

Now, Henning is taking a similar approach to addressing burglaries, only 15 percent of which are ever solved nationwide. “The low clearance rate for burglaries results from having too many cases, limited evidence at most crime scenes, and insufficient resources for follow-up investigation,” says Henning.

Studies show that burglars tend to work close to home and will commit several break-ins in a short period of time. So, Henning developed a database that allows investigators to quickly identify burglaries with similar characteristics, including location and timeframe. Now Portland officers can more easily connect related incidents, pool the evidence, and then collar the criminals.

Aslam Khalil

nobody@flickr.com (Portland State University Official Flickr Site) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:43 -0800

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FROM SOURCE TO SKY - Tracking greenhouse gases.

Scientists have long understood that carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere contributes to the “greenhouse effect”—a trapping of energy that results in higher temperatures.

But it was research by atmospheric physicist Aslam Khalil that in 1981 first recognized the rapid increase of another gas in the atmosphere 20 times more potent than CO2: methane.

Khalil, now a professor of physics at Portland State University, is one of the field’s most widely cited experts, as he has worked to understand methane and other greenhouse gases, their sources, and the human and natural behaviors producing them.

In China, farmers began planting a hybrid breed of rice that needed less water. That allowed for periodic draining of rice paddies. By not leaving land flooded year-round, and alternating other crops, Khalil and others found that farmers reduced the anaerobic conditions that produce methane.

His body of work led to the inclusion of a half-dozen greenhouse gases in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Over 190 countries worldwide (though not the United States) eventually adopted the international environmental treaty aimed at monitoring and curtailing greenhouse gas emissions.

Much of Khalil’s recent work has focused on methane—a gas 20 times more effective at trapping heat than CO2. As populations grow and urbanize, methane production increases. Seemingly paradoxically, global methane levels in the atmosphere have stabilized over the past two decades even as concentrations of other greenhouse gas levels have increased. Whether this leveling is permanent or just a temporary stay remains unclear.

Computer models and additional research will continue to improve projections of greenhouse gas emissions. But Khalil has come to accept an “irreducible uncertainty” in that science.

“More work in the field is not going to solve these problems,” Khalil says. Taking action to combat global warming will mean moving forward with policies and investments—without definitive answers or guaranteed results. That remains a major stumbling block to advancing climate policies, says Khalil.

For Aslam Khalil, an important piece of the solution is engaging scientists from across disciplines. It also means expanding curriculum to capture growing interest from students.

His undergraduate course, “The Earth’s Atmosphere: Global Change and Human Life” (Physics 375), is open to non-majors and one of only a handful in the nation to explore the systems that intertwine climate change and human (anthropogenic) activities. He is also developing a textbook addressing the topic.

Khalil was lead author of the Oregon Climate Assessment Report’s chapter on “Climate change in Oregon: Defining the problem and its causes.” Commissioned by the Oregon State Legislature and published in December 2010, the document is the first comprehensive assessment of climate issues facing Oregon.

Lis Charman

nobody@flickr.com (Portland State University Official Flickr Site) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:47 -0800

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SIGNS OF SUCCESS - Designing big for small business

Lis Charman directs PSU’s growing program in graphic design, which matches its 600+ undergraduates with Portland micro-entrepreneurs, including small shops and food carts. The students design anything and everything their clients need to increase customer volume and improve sales—websites, logos, signage, advertisements and more.

The business owners selected are part of a program run by Microenterprise Services of Oregon, an organization focusing on the needs of minorities and other under-served groups.

Charman, whose own work recently appeared on the cover of the architecture and design magazine Metropolis, says that her students benefit from working with actual clients who have specific needs and opinions and often very real budget constraints. "It's an immersive design assignment," she says. "Students have real world clients and are challenged to come up with working solutions."

Instead of hypothetical classroom scenarios, students take their cues from their clients. "We're learning to tell the best story for a specific business owner whose livelihood depends on this business," Charman says. "It's really satisfying when we design measurable solutions." Limited funds force the designers to be resourceful in finding no-cost ways to promote the business—an important lesson for students to learn early on. "Often the best solution isn't the most expensive one, it's the most creative one," Charman says.

The students, and their teacher, get the satisfaction of seeing the effects of their work make a real difference. And when the designers go out to look for jobs, Charman says, "they can speak from the position of experience, from having effectively solved a real problem for a real business."

Leslie Hammer

nobody@flickr.com (Portland State University Official Flickr Site) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:45 -0800

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WORKER WELLNESS - Resolving stress between work and family.

Psychology professor Leslie Hammer studies conflicts between people’s work and family lives, and helps organizations implement tools to help in managing these issues. Stress from such conflicts has been linked to cardiovascular risk, sleep disruption, and other health outcomes, and can also detract from organizational efficiency.

Hammer, director of the PSU-based Center for Work-Family Stress, Safety and Health, is participating in a federally funded $30 million project conducted at seven sites nationwide. The project, managed by the national Work, Family & Health Network, seeks to develop workplace initiatives—policies, procedures, and attitudes—that will help employees balance work and family, and help organizations in the process.

In the first phase of the process, Hammer says, facilitators worked with store managers in a Midwest grocery chain to educate them on the importance of work-family issues and how to create a more family-friendly workplace. Management approaches were often as simple as asking about an employee’s family, modeling good work-life balance in the manager’s own life, and working with subordinates to resolve scheduling conflicts.

An expanded second phase of the project, now getting underway, will bring the best managerial practices developed in phase one to 30 experimental sites in two additional industries—low-wage health care facilities (such as nursing homes), and higher-wage telecommunications operations. This time, Hammer says, “employees will learn from facilitators how to take more control over their work—when, where, and how they do their jobs.” This will be coupled with managerial training on family supportive supervisor behaviors.

The Work, Family & Health Network will analyze objective data on workers’ health, like blood pressure readings, and will use surveys to gather subjective information. Family health will be assessed in addition to organizational health.

“We expect a beneficial impact on employee and family health,” Hammer says, “and we hope it benefits the organization, too. We want them to see the value of reducing work-family conflict, and to take this up as a model.”

wfsupport.psy.pdx.edu/

www.kpchr.org/workfamilyhealthnetwork/public/default.aspx