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"This is a qualitative research study on the impact of an after-school program that includes art on adolescents in a low income urban community...Three areas that this study focused on were the ways that students reflected on their future goals through art-making, the dynamics of the social interactions, and the factors that affect student participation." -- p.3

In this study, I examine the influence of habitat gradients created by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Washington USA on a recently established Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) population in the Spirit Lake basin. My goal was to evaluate the responses of fish in seven streams across a volcanic disturbance gradient that included three major zones: Pyroclastic Flow (PF), Debris Avalanche (DA), and Blowdown Forest (BD). I compared fish habitat association and demography, sex ratios among age classes, and odds ratios of maturation to determine life-history responses. Age-1 maturing males were the most common life-history observed for non-young-of-year males across all fish-bearing streams. The propensity toward an early-maturing strategy seems to be mediated by two factors: one, stream resources limit residency (no fish older than age-2) and two, a strong relationship between length and maturity. Sex ratios for age-1 fish ranged in proportion from 100% male-biased in one of three fish-bearing PF streams, 65% male-biased (though not statistically different from 1:1) in one of two DA streams, to a roughly 1:1 ratio in all other streams. These results suggest that the disturbance gradient in the Spirit Lake basin may shift the ecological costs and benefits for sex-specific flexibility in life-history strategies across the landscape.

This capstone explored community-based heritage language schools (HLSs) through the eyes of parents who enroll their children. Data for this paper were drawn from parent surveys and focus groups at three Pacific Northwest HLSs: Vietnamese, Armenian, and Ukrainian. A cross-case analysis of the three HLSs explored parent motivations for enrolling children in HLSs, parent satisfaction with the HLSs, and ideas of how mainstream schools could support the work being done at the HLSs. Analysis of the data indicated that the motivations of the three distinct parent groups were similar with slight variations in priorities. The results also suggest that greater resources and support from the mainstream education system would expand the ability of the HLSs to accomplish their mission and meet parents' objectives. Study participants offered concrete suggestions of how educators could support their efforts to pass on their heritage language, and the researcher proposes practical applications for study results.

Recent studies in the Tumbar Laboratory have identified heterogenous domains in the interfollicular epidermis of skin based on gene expression patterns. These heterogenous domains are inhabited by two types of stem cells; slow cycling label retaining cells (LRCs) and fast cycling non-LRCs. My work has focused on identifying genetic markers for the slow cycling LRCs. I critically investigated previous microarray data obtained from LRCs and nonLRC analysis to identify genes that were preferentially expressed in LRC domains. Two new potential markers of epidermal LRCs have been identified, however, based on immunofluorescent studies, these two genes were not found to overlap with the strongest LRCs. Instead they overlapped with LRCs that had partially reduced label. These gene expression domains are also spatiotemporally dynamic. Therefore, these midrange LRCs may indicate a third epidermal stem cell population. This opens the way to further functional studies to elucidate the role of gene expression heterogeneity in the epidermis.