Cultural spaces are essential for creating a sense of belonging in our neighborhoods and cities. In rapidly growing metropolitan areas, gentrification threatens to displace spaces deemed significant by Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. Initial research on Seattle’s cultural spaces produced an inventory skewed toward white-centric, dominant cultural spaces in the fine arts. The initial inventory failed to represent the full range of community culture spaces, especially those cherished by local Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. What is the best process for the City of Seattle to equitably engage with communities to identify cultural spaces? In partnership with the City of Seattle Office for Civil Rights, answered this question using the analysis of ethnographic data collected through qualitative interviews and surveys, and mental mapping exercises, conducted with 100 Black, Brown, and Indigenous community members. Our research team observed trends of several types of identified cultural spaces, including small businesses, outdoor and spiritual spaces, and spaces that are either stable or facing displacement. We represented our analysis, synthesis, and coded data spatially in an interactive storytelling map and report called “Holding Space: An Interactive Ethnographic Map of Cultural Spaces in Seattle’s Black, Brown, and Indigenous Communities”. Both have been made accessible online as anti-displacement advocacy tools for community-based organizations. The results of this study will help inform the City of Seattle's cultural spaces indicator, more equitable allocation of city government funds toward Black, Brown, and Indigenous-led community culture spaces, and policy recommendations to prevent further cultural displacement in Seattle.

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects movement and often leads to tremor, rigidity, and balance issues. Speech impairment, or dysarthria, is also common and may influence many aspects of speech production, such as respiration, articulation, phonation, and prosody. There are currently multiple methods for measuring speech impairment severity over time. Often, severity of dysarthria is captured by neurologists during administration of a global measure of PD severity, the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). This scale uses one question to assess speech impairment severity on a perceptual level, but does not formally evaluate specific characteristics, such as intelligibility. Alternatively, speech-language pathologists may use measures of speech intelligibility to assess dysarthria severity. This method systematically quantifies the extent that speech was understood by a listener. The connection between these two approaches is currently unknown. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to examine the relationship between UPDRS scores and speech intelligibility metrics, two commonly-used indicators of dysarthria severity in PD. Connected speech samples for 27 individuals with idiopathic PD were collected. UPDRS ratings were completed independently by a speech expert who was blinded to intelligibility scores. Speech intelligibility ratings were based on 100-word speech samples and averaged across three listeners. Statistical analyses will include Pearson correlation to determine the strength of this relationship. Expected findings include a significant negative correlation, suggesting that increased severity on the UPDRS (higher score) corresponds to increased severity on the speech intelligibility calculation (lower score). Determining the relationship between these two indicators of speech severity will unite clinical understanding of speech impairment across the fields of neurology and speech-language pathology. This will also indicate whether a single speech severity question equates to more time-intensive intelligibility ratings.

How do ethnically-oriented mutual support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) exhibit cultural competence and ensure improved recovery outcomes? Previous research suggests that cultural competence, or the distribution of culturally relevant services within treatment structure, can help ensure successful recovery. However, no prior research has examined to what extent such competencies have been integrated into AA meetings or the effectiveness of them in ensuring recovery from alcoholism. This limitation prevents the understanding of necessary practices of substance abuse treatment that could lead to the successful recovery of ethnic minorities. This study investigates whether (1) addiction focused mutual-support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous exhibit cultural competence in organizational practices of ethnic-specific groups, and (2) the relationship between levels of cultural competence and 12-Step treatment completion. I examined six different AA groups in the greater Seattle area, consisting of both general and ethnically-defined AA groups. Interviews were used to assess the prevalence of cultural competence in ethnic-specific meetings and determine whether there was a link between culturally competent practices and successful treatment outcomes. Utilizing the qualitative data analysis computer software package, NVivo, I looked for themes or language within the interviews that corresponds with the different dimensions of cultural competence. The expected results for this study are that ethnic-specific AA meetings do exhibit cultural competence and that levels of cultural competence are positively associated with successful 12-Step treatment completion. My analysis has practical and theoretical implications. It offers insights for future practices of ethnically-defined AA groups and speaks to the broader importance of cultural competence within substance abuse treatment, especially the successful recovery of ethnic minorities from substance abuse issues. 

This paper aims to explore the gender wage gap in the University of Washington. We use data collected from College of Arts and Sciences to analyze how faculty members' salary might be affected by different factors. The number of women who entered into the labor market grew exponentially after the Second World War and women tended to spend longer hours for work. But this fact did not eliminate the existence of gender wage gap. Researching the gender wage gap in academia is unique because academics employed usually obtain relatively homogeneous education and job trainings such as earning Ph.D. degree. The factors we examine which may have an impact on the salary difference include gender, department, and the years of attainment of Ph.D. degree. This observational document study also intends to show how the number ratio of female faculty members and male faculty members differ in different department and discuss whether implicit discriminations exist. Women may spend longer time to complete Ph.D. degree due to that female's presentations and works somehow seem to face more biased judgments comparing with male by mentor or adviser and thus have less potential job experience. Women professors may experience more years in the process of tenure promotion which can lead to direct salary increase than male peers. 

This study evaluates the relationship between collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) and average teachers’ wages with econometric analysis. The literature suggests that teachers’ pay impacts the quality of educational provision, teacher retention, and quality of educational staff. Hence, understanding the determinants of teachers’ salaries is of critical policy importance. Using Washington and Idaho state as the geographic frame for my research, I collected and compiled data from 143 school districts from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Washington State Report Card, the American Community Survey (ACS), the Washington State Department of Education, and the Idaho State Department of Education. I proposed several regression models and used a CBA dummy variable to explain the variation in teachers’ wages, controlling for other relevant factors including student teacher ratio, expenditure per pupil, etc. The estimation results show that the presence of a CBA predicts a 6.1 to 6.7% increase in average WA/ID teachers’ salaries. This result is consistent with the findings in the literature that a CBA predicts a minor increase in average teachers’ salaries. This study extends the literature by verifying the importance of CBAs in the Washington/Idaho geographic area. The findings could be useful to educational stakeholders in salary negotiations, budget forecasting, and educational administration.

While technology advances and continues to increase its influence on the world, we need to scrutinize the process in which these technologies and digital platforms are created. Throughout history, there have been repeated offenses of colonization in design that erase or undermine the work of underrepresented communities. With this research, our goal is to destabilize design practices in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) reinforced through pedagogies that seek to uphold unquestioned and dangerous societal norms. Our research centers around analyzing how colonization is enabled in HCI pedagogy, both inherently from academia and uniquely to HCI, and what the impacts of such colonization are on students in HCI learning spaces. For our methodology, we employed methods of literature review, reflexive writing, and storytelling to design a toolkit facing HCI students. We reviewed literature concerning critical race theory, queer theory, feminist theory, postcolonial and anticolonial design approaches, and design justice in HCI that evoked reflection on our positionality as student designers. Our discussion of past literature and personal stories informed the creation of a design toolkit with the goal of encouraging students to identify and critique current HCI practices in pedagogical materials. The toolkit explored tangible methods and frameworks to deconstruct colonized systems in HCI pedagogy and decentralize whiteness in design, as well as articulated the burden and responsibility of resistance in marginalized communities. Throughout the toolkit, we facilitated daily probe activities and interviews with student communities, in which we asked students to document their thoughts and learning process in a multimedia format. With this study, we hope to enact change within HCI student communities by highlighting colonial concerns in modern HCI pedagogy and providing actionable steps for inclusion, advocacy, and resistance.