Justice and the River: Community Connections to an Impaired Urban River in Salt Lake City

Local communities have the right to participate in decision-making about environmental resources near where they live. Local governments have tried to gather feedback from communities to help improve the decisions they make, but have not always done a good job getting feedback from minority or urban communities. This dissertation provides one step toward obtaining this kind of public input in a majority minority community surrounding the Jordan River in Salt Lake City. Children and adults participated in this research. I present findings from two surveys, from work with children, and from adult interviews to understand how this community relates to their local river, what they like and do not like about it, and what they would like to see improved. This research revealed that communities have both positive and negative views of the river, but overall see it as an important community resource that is highly valued. Communities would like to participate more in river decision-making and have suggestions for how they would like to see that happen. The results in this dissertation can help bridge the gap between local city government officials and this minority community to help improve the river environmental quality and connections to the community

“There Is Never a Break”: The Hidden Curriculum of Professionalization for Engineering Faculty

The purpose of this exploratory special issue study was to understand the hidden curriculum (HC), or the unwritten, unofficial, or unintended lessons, around the professionalization of engineering faculty across institutions of higher education. Additionally, how engineering faculty connected the role of HC awareness, emotions, self-efficacy, and self-advocacy concepts was studied. A mixed-method survey was disseminated to 55 engineering faculties across 54 institutions of higher education in the United States. Quantitative questions, which centered around the influences that gender, race, faculty rank, and institutional type played in participants’ responses was analyzed using a combination of decision tree analysis with chi-square and correlational analysis. Qualitative questions were analyzed by a combination of tone-, open-, and focused-coding. The findings pointed to the primary roles that gender and institutional type (e.g., Tier 1) played in issues of fulfilling the professional expectations of the field. Furthermore, it was found that HC awareness and emotions and HC awareness and self-efficacy had moderate positive correlations, whereas, compared to self-advocacy, it had weak, negative correlations. Together, the findings point to the complex understandings and intersectional lived realities of many engineering faculty and hopes that through its findings can create awareness of the challenges and obstacles present in these professional environments

More than an English School: A look at the Lives of Immigrants in Northern Utah

The state of Utah has traditionally been viewed as a homogenous state with a dominant religion and small percentage of minorities (Kontuly, Smith, and Heaton 1995). Logan, Utah, in the northeastern most part of the state and the location of the study presented in this paper, is no different. According to the most recent data found in the American Community Survey of 2014, overall diversity has increased greatly in Logan in recent years. Some of this accelerating diversity is due to an increase in immigrant populations who are choosing Utah as their U.S. destination. With immigrant populations increasing, it is important to look at services available that help these new residents adapt to their new environment. The ethnographic study presented in this paper took place at one of the community organizations dedicated to assisting immigrants in their cultural adaptation processes by providing English language classes to adults, The English Language Center (ELC). This paper analyses how such an organization provides much more than English language learning to new immigrants in the Valley. It is home to a broader support network in which students openly discuss their challenges to adapting to life in Logan. This qualitative research presents insight in to the diverse adaptation strategies different immigrants employ to negotiate their new environment

Socio-Demographic Factors Influencing Water Quality Concerns in the Jordan River, Salt Lake City

Previous research suggests that river governance and management benefits from a more holistic view to include human perceptions for understanding how and why people value different aspects of waterways (Ryan 1998). Salt Lake City, Utah, is undergoing rapid population and economic growth, which has elevated the competing priorities associated with maintaining the city’s Jordan River. To understand how people living near the river perceive it, a tablet-based public-intercept survey was conducted to gather public feedback from traditionally underrepresented groups about the Jordan River Corridor. This analysis looks at respondents’ levels of concern about water quality in the Jordan River. Using socio-demographic indicators, this analysis seeks to understand what factors influence residents’ levels of concern about water quality in the river. Findings include statistically significant differences in respondents’ level of concern for Jordan River water quality based on neighborhood location, race/ethnicity, and place of birth (Utah born or not). Research in a neighboring state shows that minorities are more skeptical of urban water quality because they have been more susceptible to environmental injustices (Gartin et al. 2010, p. 37), and others have shown urban river perceptions are based on proximity to the river (Brody et al. 2005). Both cultural and spatial factors are important in this case. This poster presents results from an in-depth analysis to determine which factors contribute the most to people’s perceptions of water quality in the river to help policy makers allocate resources for competing priorities