The Remote Learning Experience at Portland State University in Spring 2020

It is an endeavor to understand what we have and will learn about the impact of remote instruction on faculty, students and relevant academic support teams. Simply put: We want to learn from an experiment foisted upon us by a health crisis. We have engaged in an incredibly innovative response. And now, we ask what have we learned? How might we improve? And, most importantly, are there implications from this experiment for the future of instruction at PSU and throughout higher education? The project was organized around two stages in the Spring 2020 term. Stage One: Out of the Gate: Reflections and Lessons Learned (First half of the term) Stage Two: Reaching the Finish Line: Lessons Learned and Recommendations for moving forward (Second half of the term). The project began the week of April 20 and continued through June 12. The original plan called for the following participants: (a) ten undergraduate students to put together a group of 8-10 other students to discuss the questions posed in the study; (b) Three graduate students who would assemble 5-7 fellow graduate students; (c) Three tenured or tenure-track faculty, two non-tenure-track faculty and three adjunct faculty, each of whom would form a chat group of 5-7 other faculty to discuss the questions posed in the study. In addition, Judith Ramaley put together a chat group of a dozen student support unit leaders to explore how each unit adjusted as the university moved quickly to remote learning and remote work and then, in a second round, what lessons each had learned throughout the spring term about ways to support students and assist faculty members who were also seeking to help their students

Transportation Network Companies, Proposition 22, and the Future of Labor Relations in the United States

While the victory of Proposition 22 (Prop 22) in the November 3rd, 2020 California State election came as a shock to many observers, Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft, the architects and beneficiaries of the ballot measure, have a long track record of subverting regulatory attempts. From this historical perspective, the novelty of Prop 22 is not related to the means employed in its victory, but in the sheer scale of effort involved. In other words, Prop 22 represents an escalation of a familiar framework of regulatory subversion by the TNCs, whose success at the ballot box may turn the initiative campaign into something of a model for their contemporaries looking to skirt burdensome regulation or trim labor costs and benefits. From this vantage, it is rather easy to draw any number of worthwhile lines of inquiry from Prop 22’s victory, but this paper will concern itself primarily with the implications of these proceedings on the future of labor relations in this country. It will strive to address these implications by beginning with an introductory section that will familiarize the reader with a framework for understanding the TNCs history of regulatory subversion. Then it will present a brief outline of the relevant case and legislative history that led the TNCs to pursue Prop 22 in California. From there, it will take a step back and discuss what Prop 22 does and, by extension, why it is so crucial for the TNC business model. It will then turn its attention to the pro-Prop 22 campaign and how it used in-app “clicktivism”, political contributions, misinformation, and superficial racial politics to mobilize the California electorate. Finally, the paper will close with a section dedicated to parsing the implications of Prop 22’s passage, especially as they relate to the future of labor relations in this country

Drought and resprouting plants

Many species have the ability to resprout vegetatively after a substantial loss of biomass induced by environmental stress, including drought. Many of the regions characterised by ecosystems where resprouting is common are projected to experience more frequent and intense drought during the 21st Century. However, in assessments of ecosystem response to drought disturbance there has been scant consideration of the resilience and post-drought recovery of resprouting species. Systematic differences in hydraulic and allocation traits suggest that resprouting species are more resilient to drought-stress than nonresprouting species. Evidence suggests that ecosystems dominated by resprouters recover from disturbance more quickly than ecosystems dominated by nonresprouters. The ability of resprouters to avoid mortality and withstand drought, coupled with their ability to recover rapidly, suggests that the impact of increased drought stress in ecosystems dominated by these species may be small. The strategy of resprouting needs to be modelled explicitly to improve estimates of future climate-change impacts on the carbon cycle, but this will require several important knowledge gaps to be filled before resprouting can be properly implemented