Schedule at a Glance Speaker Index Room 1 Room 2 Room 3 Room 4 Room 5 Room 6 Room 7 Room 8 Room 9 Room 10 Room 11 Posters Special Events
ZOOM link for off-campus community members
COVID-19 brought changes to higher education in the U.S., transitioning to online learning due to public health mandates of social distancing, isolation, and quarantine. This research will look into the experiences of a purposeful sample of faculty members to learn about their experiences as faculty members at Willamette through an anonymous interview and survey. Overall, the results of this research will be used to inform university faculty and administrators of ways to support faculty in times of emergency and social distress, which will ultimately support students’ academic wellbeing in times of emergency and social distress.
Faculty Sponsor: Joyce Millen
Discipline: Public Health Ethics, Advocacy and Leadership
This study explores environmental and public health injustices associated with waste incineration. Waste incinerators, particularly old ones, are significant sources of pollution, emitting heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and mercury into the air and soil. People living near waste incinerators are at elevated risk for developing respiratory ailments, cardiovascular illness, certain cancers, miscarriages, and more. For these reasons, communities throughout the U.S. are working to close down old incinerators. This study examines the complex array of reasons why, despite years of effort to close them down, some remain, including the case of Covanta located just north of Salem.
Faculty Sponsor: Joyce Millen
Discipline: Public Health Ethics, Advocacy and Leadership
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the deficits of Public Health in the U.S. into light, most notably in terms of perpetually underfunded health departments, chronic staffing shortages and the inadequate ethnic representation within public health institutions. One possible remedy to grow and diversify the public health workforce is to engage traditionally underrepresented college and graduate students to work alongside public health professionals through the creation of robust and sustainable internship programs. This project was devoted to researching these considerations at national, state and county levels and developing an internship program at the Marion County Department of Health and Human Services.
Faculty Sponsor: Joyce Millen
Discipline: Public Health Ethics, Advocacy and Leadership
How has the pandemic affected our healthcare system? Our surgical units? Cancer treatment? Two words, staffing shortages. Every health care sector has been negatively affected by the pandemic through staffing shortages. There aren’t enough surgeons to complete surgeries. There aren’t enough nurses to help all the patients. This research paper focuses on nurses and staffing shortages. It analyzes how staffing shortages have affected nurses' well-being and ability to give adequate patient care. The analysis of pandemic caused staffing shortages is developed through research of previous studies and through informational interviews with various nurses at Salem Health.
Faculty Sponsor: Joyce Millen
Discipline: Public Health Ethics, Advocacy and Leadership
As an intern for a member of the Oregon House’s Behavioral Health Committee, I tracked the successful passage of HB 4004 which provided grant funding to address the labor shortage for mental health and substance abuse treatment. While the bill is a useful stop-gap measure, the labor shortage it addressed persisted long before COVID brought it to an emergent status with greater public awareness. Such an ongoing imbalance between supply and demand is inherently unsustainable. I explored the root causes for this disparity and ways to create a more resilient provision of behavioral healthcare and improved public health in Oregon.
Faculty Sponsor: Joyce Millen
Discipline: Public Health Ethics, Advocacy and Leadership
The COVID-19 pandemic is a uniquely universal yet simultaneously individually different experience that has consumed the world for the past three years, but what specifically has impacted communities that experienced this pandemic differently? This presentation and accompanying research paper focus on the structural transformations due to the pandemic that have changed the lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities through interviews conducted at local nonprofit Shangri-La. This research highlights the lasting aftermath of the staffing shortage, adjustment to life online, the mental and physical toll experienced by these individuals, and more while emphasizing why that experience is unique.
Faculty Sponsor: Joyce Millen
Discipline: Public Health Ethics, Advocacy and Leadership
The Oregon Department of Human Services has detailed emergency and disaster planning laws and regulations intended to “minimize loss of life and mitigate trauma” among elders who live in residential care and assisted living facilities during the time of an emergency. All such facilities must prepare and maintain a written emergency preparedness plan, conduct twice yearly drills and participate in inspections at least once every two years. Yet, despite these well-founded requirements on the books, some facilities are ill prepared and ill equipped to properly handle an emergency. This study explores the many reasons why this may be.
Faculty Sponsor: Joyce Millen
Discipline: Public Health Ethics, Advocacy and Leadership
Why do some populations “fall through the cracks” of social safety nets and services such as those provided by local food banks? How do we improve services to close such “cracks”? These questions, with focus on the area’s Slavic population, guided my research as an intern with the Marion Polk Food Share. Interviews with key members of the Slavic community as well as with Food Share staff and public health officials revealed myriad historically-founded cultural and linguistic factors that impede or discourage vulnerable people from accessing the food and services offered by the food bank.
Faculty Sponsor: Joyce Millen
Discipline: Public Health Ethics, Advocacy and Leadership
This project is an interrogation the experiences of bisexual individuals and their partners within queer spaces, and the way that identity and acceptance hinge on gender presentation. The romanticization of same sex attraction for bisexual people, and the effect that this has on straight and/or cis passing partners and relationships, is a widely unrecognized form of biphobia. It is also inextricably linked to the transphobic narrative that masculinity is inherently flawed, dangerous, and condemnable. This project investigates the ways that ‘feminist’ notions and spaces perpetuate these biphobic and transphobic narratives under the guise of celebrating queerness and femininity.
Faculty Sponsor: Leslie Dunlap
Discipline: Women's and Gender Studies
This video essay tracks how horror movie violence has changed both narratively and visually since the 1930’s, with a focus on the genre's usual victims--women and racial minorities. Through a close reading of films, their promotion, and critical reception, the project considers the way these images reflect our nation and the way they impact individuals. I’ll also show the technologies and strategies that viewers from victimized demographics can use to lessen the impact. Audiences can not only hear my analysis, but see for themselves the source material, involving both sight and sound just as we do at the movies.
Faculty Sponsor: Leslie Dunlap
Discipline: Cinema Studies
This thesis begins to interrogate scenes of close relationships with minors and intimacy with young adults in theatre and film and the practices around them. We will look at how youth and young adults are given autonomy and agency over their physical interactions, how that compares with how the entertainment industry teaches performer autonomy, and the current representations of close relationships with youth on stage and screen — using theatrical intimacy theory and advocacy as lenses to reimagine youth performer autonomy. This presentation will draw on my experiences transitioning from a youth to a young adult performer in order to illuminate the need for further exploration and support in the industry.
Faculty Sponsor: Leslie Dunlap
Discipline: Women's and Gender Studies
My thesis explores what the everyday activist looks like and the creative ways that activists take care of their spiritual health. Because an everyday activist embodies activism in their daily lived experience, creating boundaries and personal toolkits are crucial for survival. Drawing on the concept of “emergent strategy,” I examine how people can navigate times of chaos by creating practices to combat overwork and the hyperextension of self required by capitalism. These rituals create space for pleasure and self care. My research hopefully offers sustainable ways that activists may reach balance in their daily lives.
Faculty Sponsor: Leslie Dunlap
Discipline: Women's and Gender Studies