Fall 2019 Mini-grant Recipients
Chasen Afghani
Major: Linguistics Faculty Mentor: Melissa Baese-Berk
Project Title: The Affects of Incentivization in Perception of Non-Native Speech
Abstract:
Linguistic studies have shown that there a number of ways in which social factors affect the perception of non-native speech by a native speaker. These factors can result in non-native, heavily-accented speech being perceived as either understandable or not understandable. With these studies in mind, I am asking how the influence of incentive, specifically monetary incentive, will affect the accuracy of perception of a native speaker listening to non-native speech. To investigate this question, I am working in Melissa Baese-Berks’ Speech Perception and Production Lab, where we will pay subjects to participate in a study where they listen to non-native speech and transcribe what they have heard. Then I will look at the accuracy, as well as the learning curve of each participant’s perception. I will compare two groups, one getting paid a flat-rate for their time and the other getting paid more or less depending on their accuracy. My hypothesis is that the group which was given initial incentive to try to perceive the speech more accurately will not only start the study with a higher level of accuracy in their perception, but will also likely have a steeper learning curve in their perception throughout the study. I believe this research project can have a significant impact on how we view non-native speakers in a variety of settings, including employment settings, and how we can potentially encourage native speakers to try a bit harder in their communication with non-native speakers and efforts to perceive non-native speech accurately.
Zack Demars
Major: Journalism, Political Science Faculty Mentor: Peter Laufer
Project Title: From 1960 to Now: Beginning a Pen Pal Program Between Oregon and Russia
Abstract:
This project aims to ignite international friendship by initiating a pen pal program between a group of fourth-grade students in Yoncalla, Ore. with a similar class in Rostov-on-Don, Russia and observing and reporting the activity. Students in Yoncalla have already written letters, and in this project I will take those letters to a class in Russia this December.
The project builds on the work of a fourth-grade class in 1960s Roseburg, Ore., which attempted to begin such a pen pal program with their then-Soviet counterparts. Upon a request to the US State Department to assist in the facilitation of this correspondence, the federal government offered no help to the students, and the project ended quietly.
After 60 years, a class of UO journalism students is researching and reporting the story of those fourth-graders. We’ve dug through newspaper archives for accounts of the story, interviewed students who were involved in the project, located the surviving family members of the class’ teacher and traveled to Las Vegas to interview a key student involved in the story. I’ve personally made over a dozen requests to federal agencies for access to their public records about the events and the FBI’s involvement.
Aside from the student letters and the newly initiated pen pal program, this portion of the project will also result in a chapter of a forthcoming book. Nine other chapters have been reported and written about the events of 1960, and this chapter will complete the book by completing the pen pal attempt of decades ago. I have written two of the book’s chapters already.
This project is unique – to my knowledge, this story has never been reported in this depth. Certainly, a team of student reporters has never sent a reporter to Russia to initiate and report on a correspondence program.
Harrison Jensen
Major: Planning, Public Policy, and Management Faculty Mentor: Nicole Ngo
Project Title: Procedural Barriers to Health Care: Applying for Coverage through the Oregon Health Plan
Abstract:
The purpose of this research project is to examine how the application process for the Oregon Health Plan (OHP), Oregon’s Medicaid program, might discourage OHP-eligible Oregonians from enrolling. The participation rate in OHP among the OHP-eligible adult population in Oregon hovers around 86%, meaning that 14% of those who meet the eligibility criteria for the program opt not to enroll. One of the more frequently cited reasons OHP-eligible adult Oregonians do not enroll is the onerous application process for Medicaid, which can be complex, difficult, and inconvenient. Considering that Medicaid could protect many more low-income Americans from the often exorbitant cost of health care, little research has been done on the link between the application process and issues of take-up. This research project aims to fill this gap in the body of research on Medicaid through interviews with those most familiar with the application process — OHP enrollees. What research has been done on the application process for Medicaid suggests that procedural barriers such as travel time and the lack of convenient application assistance (e.g. for would-be-enrollees not proficient in English) make it hard for Medicaid-eligibles to enroll. I intend to ask current and/or former OHP enrollees about whether they encountered procedural barriers like these in applying for coverage. I expect to find that the lack of readily-available application assistance is the primary reason why so many OHP-eligible individuals have difficulty applying for the program or might give up on applying or re-enrolling altogether.
Maurisa Rapp
Major: Human Physiology Faculty Mentor: Carrie McCurdy
Project Title: Intergenerational Effects of Western Style Diet on Mitochondrial Reactive Oxygen Species Production and DNA Damage
Abstract:
Epidemilogical studies have shown that children from obese pregnancies have an increased risk for developing obesity and metabolic syndrome. Disruption of skeletal muscle mitochondrial function is associated with obesity related metabolic diseases, including Type 2 diabetes. Using a previously established non-human primate model of maternal obesity, I propose to investigate the effect of maternal obesity and in utero western style diet (WSD) exposure on 3 year old juvenile offspring. Japanese Macaques were placed on either a control (CON) diet or WSD for 2-7 years prior to pregnancy. Offspring were then weaned onto CON diet until age 3, creating two sample groups: maternal CON, postweaning CON (mC/C) and maternal WSD, postweaning CON (mW/C). Previously, our lab has shown that a maternal WSD, with increased saturated fats and sugars, alters offspring skeletal muscle functions. Increased markers of mitochondrial damage have been found to be compounded with decreased release of (reactive oxygen species) ROS with maternal obesity, suggesting altered ROS handling may increase mitochondrial damage. I will measure the abundance of mitochondrial DNA as a reporter for mitochondrial abundance and the relative amount of mitochondrial DNA damage in skeletal muscle tissue by quantitative PCR. I expect that exposure to maternal WSD and obesity will increase the mitochondrial DNA damage in offspring at 3 years of age. My research is significant because it will determine whether maternal obesity predisposes offspring to metabolic disease through increased mitochondrial damage.
Shelby Saper
Major: Anthropology Faculty Mentor: Dennis Jenkins
Project Title: Assessing Typology of Pre-Mazama Corner-notched Points in the Northern Great Basin
Abstract:
In North America, some of the most valuable archaeological artifacts are projectile points. Researchers can use these points to relatively date sequences of human occupation levels at archaeological sites for they are considered index fossils. Numerous archaeologists have tried to define chronologies for each point typology found throughout North America. For decades, the Monitor Valley Key has been used by Great Basin archaeologists to differentiate “types” of projectile points. While this typological scheme is still widely considered the most prolific projectile point classification system across the Great Basin, it fails to consider probable regional variation. Refining regional chronologies of projectile point typologies is important for improving their status as index fossils.
Projectile point chronologies and typologies are at times hotly debated. Some researchers support a “long-chronology” for corner-notched points in the Great Basin, with these points dating to as old as 8,500 cal BP. Opponents support a “short-chronology”, suggesting corner-notched points are younger than 5,000 cal BP. This debate suffers from the use of a variety of typological schemes, regional variability, and lack of buried sites, where projectile point contexts can be precisely dated. University of Oregon excavations have recovered corner-notched projectile points in well-stratified context associated with cultural features at the Connley Caves, Oregon. In this project, I will apply a variety of typological schemes to these points and others found in contexts below Mount Mazama tephra (ca. 7630 cal BP) in Oregon to provide information on the typology and age of pre-Mazama corner-notched points in the northern Great Basin. Additionally, I will obtain new radiocarbon dates from a hearth feature (fire pit) associated with these projectile points to unequivocally establish the age of these atypical projectile points at the Connley Caves. Retrieving these dates would either substantiate the claim of a “long-chronology” or “short-chronology” of pre-Mazama corner-notched points.
Kezia Setyawan
Major: Journalism Faculty Mentor: Sung Park
Project Title: Where Do You Belong: Cultural Values and Identity Shifts in Chinese Indonesian Communities Through Migration and Assimilation
Abstract:
This professional project will explore how identity and values shift through the lens of migration and assimilation for Chinese Indonesians. With today’s political climate in the United States, there is a lot of conversation on who is deemed worthy enough to stay or be viewed as American. I hope to answer the question of borders, migration and belonging by focusing specifically on Chinese Indonesians. I want to see more work that breaks the boundary of only have white journalists cover communities of color without understanding the nuance of their experience.
I decided to focus on Chinese Indonesians because of their interesting placement in Indonesia history as being ostracized and segregated by Dutch colonization for over 350 years, gaining economic power while being shut out of politics, forced assimilation by a nationalist Indonesian government in the 60s, and riots in the 1990s that pushed Chinese Indonesians to migrate away. Therefore, when Chinese Indonesians migrate to the United States and the Global North, this project will document how are the experiences here similar and different. I will also examine the notions of the American Dream and the ramifications that can come by adhering to the model minority concept and settler colonial logic by interviewing both first and second generation to see variations in opinion in the diaspora.
The project matters because it is a multimedia journalistic package that has many different entry points for the audience to engage with and humanizes what may only be seen as a statistic on paper rather than actual people.
Momo Wilms-Crowe
Major: Political Science Faculty Mentor: Dan Tichenor
Project Title:Cultivating Self-Determination: Food Sovereignty as a Challenge to Coloniality in Puerto Rico
Abstract:
Food sovereignty – the right of communities to define and control their own food and agricultural policies – has increasingly become a rallying call for a particular strain of food justice activism around the globe. Going beyond a focus on food security, food sovereignty invokes an explicitly political critique of the larger structures producing cases of food injustice, especially neoliberalism, free-trade policies, and capital-intensive industrial agriculture. Advocating for democratic control and a greater distribution of wealth, knowledge, power, and land, food sovereignty work through agroecology is a key avenue for political resistance to neoliberal coloniality as it appears in Puerto Rico today. This work carries radical political implications and can be understood as part of a broader struggle for democratic self-determination, visible especially in the post-Maria context and highlighted by the #RickyRenuncia protests that marked the summer of 2019. My thesis explores these tensions by working with grassroots organizations and agroecology collectives to see how the movement has operated as a direct challenge to deep-rooted conditions of coloniality and how food sovereignty has been linked to larger questions of Puerto Rican political sovereignty and self-determination. I situate this ethnographic research within a historical analysis of how food has operated as a means of colonial control and subjugation. My research fills a whole in the literature by applying decolonial and critical theory to a case study often overlooked in the field as a result of Puerto Rico’s complicated geopolitical relationship with the US.