Ivan Carrasco Perez

My name is Ivan Perez Carrasco. I was born in a small town in Tepelmeme de Morelos, Oaxaca. I am the second oldest of my siblings, and the first to go to college in my family. I am a senior in the Civil Engineering Program at Portland State University. I am interested in sustainable appropriate technologies. I hope to apply to graduate school next year.

“Three Gorge Dam”

The Republic of China's Three Gorge Dam was completed earlier this year after 77 years of political debate about its utility and 10 years of construction. There have been many assessments and feasibility studies of the project, and this paper analyses the overall advantages and disadvantages of the dam by looking at the Yangtze basin and myriad sectors affected by the dam and making a comprehensive assessment about the sustainability of the Three Gorge Dam.

Mike Gorji, PhD

Tyanne Conner

After many detours in my educational path, I am now working toward a B.S. in Sociology.  With luck and hard work, my path will take me through my M.S. in Sociology at PSU and on to a PhD from a school in a terrific location!  Topics of particular interest to me include immigration, globalization and the failures of healthcare in the U.S. While education is extremely important to me, I try to find balance by enjoying outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, backpacking, cross-country skiing and walking in my favorite park.

“Nativism or a Response to Globalization?”

Industries such as agriculture, service, hospitality, construction, maintenance, and meat packing and processing have relied heavily on immigrant labor and have voiced opposition to H.R. 4437, the restrictive immigration reform passed recently by the House of Representatives which would provide no amnesty, no path to legalization, and reduce the number of worker visas.

Other companies and industries favor tighter border security, and punitive action toward undocumented immigrants and those who hire them.  I propose that the position these businesses take toward immigration reform is more a response to globalization than one of nativism.

Johanna Brenner, PhD

Janette Crume-Centeno

I was born in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and I am an enrolled Klamath Tribal member who has returned to school with my own unique experience and the desire to add the Native American story to the traditional American narrative.   I was inspired to return to school after witnessing how the Klamath Basin Water Crisis was affecting my hometown.   I have been a housekeeper, retail clerk, bookkeeper, tribal services administrator, and an elected delegate to both Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and National Congress of American Indians.  I am majoring in History with a minor in Native American Studies. I spend my spare time researching Rock Art all around the world.  My granddaughter strengthens my resolve to research and teach our Klamath history, if only for her to grow up proud of the tradition and ancestors she descends from.

“History of the Mind: A Survey of Rock Art Creation Theory”

Theories of Rock Art creation are many and varied.  This work represents a chronological assessment of more than one hundred years of Rock Art creation hypotheses, a historiography of the mind.  A multi-disciplinary analysis of primary source materials, theories beginning with Edouard Lartet’s 1864 art pour l’art and ending with David Lewis-Williams 2002 Shamanism and Altered States of Consciousness will demonstrate how, over time, thought has evolved to explain why early and modern man felt the need to paint or carve on rock faces.  Traditionally, anthropology and history relied on material correlates to reconstruct the intentions of ancient peoples.  Instead of recreating why ancient peoples elected to document their cultures on parietal rock panels, I chose to document anthropological thought.  Through trial and error, researchers have traversed the unknowable to evolve and expand on our understanding of Rock Art creation.  While critics of these concepts point to the impact of social influences such as Darwin’s The Origin of Species and the 1960s' drug culture on the contemporary development of novel thought, I will demonstrate how researchers, using scientific methodology and empirical evidence, have built on prior studies to add complexity to our understanding of ancient man and Rock Art creation. 

Tim Garrison, PhD

Dr. Garrison (J.D., Georgia; Ph.D. Kentucky) is the Director of Native American Studies at Portland State University.  He is the author of The Legal Ideology of Removal: The Southern Judiciary and the Sovereignty of Native American Nations and a number of articles on the Indian Removal crisis.  He is presently editing an encyclopedia on U. S. Indian policy for Congressional Quarterly Press.

Rupert Dallas

I am a senior at PSU, majoring in Community Development with a minor in Sustainability. I am the fifth of seven children and was born on the island of Jamaica. Dr. Vivek Shandas and I have been studying land use and landscape analysis. I will graduate in the spring and I have my sights set on attending the School of Urban Studies to attain an MA in Urban and Regional Planning.

“Land Use Metric Analysis”

This study integrates land usage data and landscape metrics in an approach to derive information about landscape fragmentation and its relationship to other drivers that have the most effect on land use patterns. The investigations are based on the analysis of digital air-photo managed by Geographical Information Systems, and by using the program “Fragstats” in the Portland metropolitan area. The research shows how some changes in commercial, high, and low density residential developments in urban environments can be described and their effects concerning land use can be quantified using this landscape metric structure. Future investigations will focus on how these same landscape metrics and land usage patterns are affecting surrounding watershed and sub-watersheds.

Vivek Shandas, PhD

Dr. Shandas’ teaching and research interests include: environmental policy, geographic information systems, natural resource management, participatory planning, and urban ecology.  The broad objective of his research is to address three questions:

(1) what is known about the effects of human activities on ecological integrity? (2) how do changes in ecosystems affect human preferences and decisions? and (3) how can institutions guide the growth of human settlements and its effects?  Current projects include: developing spatially-explicit tools for environmental planners, integrating human preferences and biophysical conditions into watershed planning policies, assessing public outreach strategies by planning agencies, and evaluating the effectiveness of critical area ordinances in growth management planning.  Dr. Shandas has worked as a middle-school teacher in Oregon, and as a health and environmental policy analyst for the New York State governor’s office.

Bernardine Delaney

I am a senior at Portland State University. I returned to school in 2004 to complete my education. My strength as a student originates from my love of the curriculum and my drive to maintain and improve the health of my community. I will graduate in 2007 with a Bachelor of Science in Health Studies with a concentration in Community Health Education.

“The Increasing Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes among Mexican American Youth”

Diabetes is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes among Mexican Americans is almost twice that of non-Hispanic whites. The onset of type 2 diabetes is generally diagnosed in adults over the age of forty. Although rare, there has been a recent trend in the increasing incidence of type 2 diabetes among Mexican American Youth. Diabetes greatly increases one’s risk of developing serious health complications, such as kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, and blindness.  The known risk factors for type 2 diabetes are obesity, low physical activity, and a high-fat and low-fiber diet. The aim of this paper is to examine how these risk factors contribute to the increased incidence of diabetes among the Mexican American population, age nineteen and younger.

Roberto De Anda, PhD

Mary Fletcher

My name is Mary Fletcher and I completed my undergraduate degree in June, 2006 with a major in Sociology. Since coming to Portland State in Fall of 2003, I have been an active member of the Associated Students of Portland State, PSU's student government.  I have served as an ASPSU senator, as an executive staff member and as Vice-Chair of the Student Fee committee, which allocates and funds nine million dollars in student fee funds to over one hundred student groups and organizations on campus. My academic focus has been on social justice and my extracurricular activities have allowed me to build on this knowledge and to lobby elected officials in Oregon to prioritize the needs of Higher Education in our state.  My future plans are to find an ideal PhD program that will expand on my passionate interest in areas of social justice and public policy.

"The Imposture Phenomenon and First-Generation Female College Students"

The Imposter Phenomenon has been defined as an internal experience of intellectual phoniness in high-achieving women who seem unable to internalize their success experiences. In this study, the researcher explores the Imposter Phenomenon through the Sociology of Education, in particular the challenges faced by first-generation female college students. These challenges will be explored using qualitative in-depth interviews.  Two sets of interview participants were chosen to detail two transition points, the beginning of the first year at a four-year institution, and the transition from undergraduate completion to beginning a graduate program. These two transition points will provide the interviewer with rich detail as to how these women experience and cope with feeling like an imposter in an academic setting.

Peter Collier, PhD

Dr. Collier is Associate Professor of Sociology at Portland State University.  His research focuses on identity acquisition, the development of role mastery, and access issues within higher education.  He is the project director for the “Students First Mentoring Program,” a U.S. Department of Education-funded intervention to improve first-generation college student retention rates.  With Christine Cress and Vicki Reitenauer, he is co-author of Serving and Learning: A Student Workbook for Community-Based Experiences across the Disciplines (Stylus Press co-published by American Association of Higher Education, 2005).

Cat Goughnour

As a native Oregonian, born and reared on the coast, rural experiences sparked my curiosity in social justice, human equity and higher education.  They also imparted wanderlust and an insatiable desire for new experiences.  I attribute much of my interest in, knowledge of, and unique perspective on political philosophy to my decade-long adventure, which spanned the continent.

I am finishing a B.A. in Liberal Arts with a minor in Philosophy to augment an A.A. in Clothing Design. This year, as I continue my journey for new experiences, I am also applying to PhD programs to expand the research I started as a McNair scholar.

“White Lies of Omission: Blacks and Education”

In the 21^st century, many people are experiencing unprecedented wealth, while considerably more struggle to survive, in poverty.  This phenomenon is endemic in the African American community.  At the turn of the millennium, nearly forty years after the Civil Rights movement, affirmative action, and the assassination of major black leaders, African Americans realized unprecedented socioeconomic, political and educational disparity. 

Over the past 100 years, as evidenced by globalization, job outsourcing, and the monopolistic hegemony of multinational corporations, the United States economy has moved, increasingly, from the Industrial Age to the Technological and Information Ages.

Because American businesses and education continue to operate within a system rife with institutionalized racism, fostering discriminatory practices in hiring and renting, economic disparity, high drop-out and low enrollment rates in schools, racial profiling, imprisonment, and the marginalization of the accomplishments of Americans of African descent, African Americans are poised on a precarious precipice. This predicament leads me to query: Would a return to the historic visions and precedents of our ancestors provide insight into the current “achievement gap?”

Though there are many theories posited as to the cause of this inequality, most rely on victim-blaming, lack of motivation and inferiority. In light of the human genome project and the irrefutable truth that Blacks have achieved monolithic academic accomplishments, it is my contention that what is needed, now, is a return to the philosophy of education.  In this postindustrial era, through the analysis of notable African American philosophers and activists, I seek to reexamine if literacy, or higher-education, is really the path to liberation for Black Americans or will vocational training suffice.

Ann Mussey, PhD

Dr. Mussey is Assistant Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies. She earned a doctoral degree in History in 2001 from Rutgers University with a special focus on the historical construction of lesbian subjectivity in the twentieth century U.S. She has translated her interests in gender, sexuality, and history into numerous courses in sexuality studies and new research on the relationship between sexuality and the state.

Donna Harris

I am a first-generation college student who has struggled for years to obtain a college degree. As a single mom with two kids, I felt unable to attend college due to time and lack of money.  Following the diagnosis and successful removal of a brain tumor in 2001, I created a list of items to be accomplished.  Following “events with my children”, I listed “finishing my college degree”.  With determination, I began a journey that led me to Portland State University.  By spring 2004, I began taking classes and finished my last required class in summer, 2006. 

“Did Fictive Kinships exist in the Kalaupapa Settlement from 1942-1945?”

Since the establishment of the Leper Colony on the Kalaupapa Peninsula, more than 4,000 children have been incarcerated as patients.  Before World War II, children diagnosed with leprosy or Hansen’s disease were no longer shipped to the settlement, but instead remained in a leprosarium in Honolulu. The Kalaupapa Settlement provided incarceration for adult patients only.  Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, the State of Hawaii determined that the diseased children in Honolulu be shipped to the settlement for their own well being.  This resulted in the isolation of children from their families and confinement to a settlement in which no children had been allowed.  How did this isolation from family affect the socialization of these children with adults within the patient community?  Did fictive kinships exist and how were they created?  This research will show that fictive kinships did exist, and these relationships were complex and important to the welfare of the patient community.

Siobhan Maty, PhD

Holly Hernandez

Patricia Duncan, PhD

Carol Morgaine, PhD

Loucynda Jensen

I was born in Portland, Oregon and, never having lived outside the Metro area, I have been a proud Portlander ever since. I grew up a middle child, and being raised by a hard-working single mother has instilled in me the drive to work hard for what I want in life, and to persevere, no matter what the obstacles, in order to realize my goals. I have always enjoyed school and knew from a young age that I wanted to teach, but in the past four years the realization that I also have a passion for history has brought these desires together. I now plan on earning my PhD in History and one day becoming a professor.

This paper explores black female resistance to slavery in the antebellum United States from multiple perspectives. I will appraise how a definition of “resistance” can be applied to women’s unique actions from this time period, with a focus on those modes of female resistance that seem to have ultimately attacked the practice of “breeding” employed by slaveholders; specifically infanticide and abortion. I have also been forced to find a way to capture and interpret direct primary evidence of black women’s reproductive choices during slavery (which are scant and few). In reading primary and secondary source materials, I have come to wonder how much of such evidence “proves” or allows for generalizations about black women’s reproductive choices. While grappling with examples of very different kinds of evidence, I will be forced to discover their meanings, silences, and significance.

Patricia Schechter, PhD

Melissa Lindsey

I was born in Salem, Oregon and grew up in a small town called Gervais.  I am the youngest of five children.  My parents are both Hawaiian and my mother is also Chinese and my father was part Portuguese. In order to cultivate my fascination with the dynamics of a city, I moved to Portland five years ago with my son who is now nine.  I plan to graduate with a bachelor of science in Community Development and Social Science while minoring in Real Estate Development and Sustainable Urban Development at Portland State University.  I will then continue on to graduate school for an MA and a PhD in Urban Planning.

“Single-mother Households:  Another face of poverty”

There were 18,148 single mothers in Multnomah County in 2003.  About half or 9,025 earned less than $19,999 a year.  The other half did slightly better: 5,664 earned from $20,000 to $39,999, 2,505 earned $40,000 to $74,999, and 954 earned $75,000 or more.  The fact that half of this population earned less than $20,000 per year is an indicator that these women were struggling to make ends meet. The purpose of this paper is to analyze policies implemented to help low-income single-female-headed households with children.  I will investigate single mothers' economic hardships in Multnomah County and the effectiveness of policies and programs designed to help them.

Karen Gibson, PhD

Marie Loeb

After a short stint as a small business owner in the independent film distribution market, I returned to school to become the first in my family to graduate with a four-year degree.  My experience as an undergraduate has been better than I could have imagined, as I have been able to work on exciting research projects, excel academically, and become a mother.  I can only hope I will be able to find a graduate program that provides such a holistic experience as a student.  Once I receive my PhD in Psychology, I hope to add my film background into an academic context to reach the broadest audience with exciting research.

For over a year, Marie Loeb has been involved in the post-production of Queens of Heart: Community Therapists in Drag (Haaken & Kohn, 2006), a feature length documentary that uses queer theory, psychoanalytic theory, and pop culture to present an ethnographic study of the longest running drag club in the United States, Darcelle XV and Company. 

Loeb illustrates the academic side and methods of the research-based documentary. 

Haaken, J. & Kohn, W. (Directors). (2006). Queens of Heart:Community Therapists in Drag [Motion Picture]. 

United States: PSU Foundation & Kwamba Productions. 

Janice Haaken, PhD

Dr. Haaken is Professor of Psychology at Portland State University, a clinical and community psychologist, and a documentary filmmaker. An interdisciplinary scholar, Haaken has published extensively in the areas of psychoanalysis and feminism, the psychology of social movements, memory, and the dynamics of storytelling. Her work is informed by psychoanalytic clinical and cultural theory, feminist theory, and critical psychology. Haaken is author of Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory and the Perils of Looking Back, and Speaking Out: Women, War, and the Global Economy. She is co-author of the curriculum, Scarves of Many Colors: Women and the Veil. Her documentary films include Diamonds, Guns and Rice: Sierra Leone and the Women’s Peace Movement, and Queens of Heart: Community Therapists in Drag.

Favoure Miller

I am the oldest of three girls raised in Eugene, Oregon by a strong single mother. I graduated from Winston Churchill High School in 1997 and became a Human Rights Commissioner for the city of Eugene. Between 1995 and 1999, I was president of the NAACP Eugene/Springfield chapter where I was involved with the ACT-SO (Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological, and Scientific Olympics) program. My life has been dedicated to enriching the lives of underprivileged children. In August 2006, I graduated from Portland State University with a double major in Black Studies and Social Science. I plan to attend graduate school to attain my doctoral degree from the School of Urban Studies. After graduate school, my goal is to create an academic program that will provide underprivileged children with the knowledge, confidence, resources and support needed to achieve their dreams and realize their full potential.

“Movement Mobilization and Immigrant Rights of the 21^st century”

The May Day Protests of 2006 were reported as the largest single-day protest in United States history. Millions of citizens from different racial and economic backgrounds, and generations of “illegal immigrants” united to protest HR 4437, passed by the House of Representatives in December of 2005.  This anti immigrant bill would make it a felony to be undocumented in the U.S. or to provide any type of humanitarian aid to undocumented immigrants and their families. Social movement theories provide evidence that mobilization does not occur in a vacuum. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What caused the rise and success of the recent immigrant rights protests? How do we progress as a nation of immigrants with positive motives? Do we lose our human rights when we leave our country of origin?

Jose Padin, PhD

Lori Noice

I am a native of Portland, Oregon, as is my husband of ten years.  I am a writer, a researcher, and an artist, although not necessarily in that order.  I am currently obtaining my BS in Physics with a minor in Mathematics.  In the future, I hope to be working in photovoltaic power generation, and I am planning to pursue a PhD in Physics or Material Science to that end.

"Efficiency viability of photovoltaic cells made from silicon nanowires and poly (3- hexylthiophene)”

For Photovoltaic (PV) power to compete with and eventually supplant fossil fuel utility markets, the cost of production per unit energy output must be dramatically reduced.  That, along with environmental concerns, especially with high-efficiency cadmium-based PV cells, is driving the frontiers of PV cell research towards novel materials and designs. This paper discusses the feasibility of one such novel design involving an organic/inorganic heterojunction created from n-type silicon nanowires and the p-type semiconducting polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene). 

Raj Solanki, PhD

Katrina Pariera

I was born in Southern Oregon, where I spent my early childhood. I was raised by mother, older sister and older brother in Santa Cruz County, California, until I was 11, when my mother and I moved back to Southern Oregon. I moved to Portland in 2001 to work and attend Portland State University, where I graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Applied Linguistics in 2006. I plan to spend the next year working as an English teacher in South Korea and then returning to the U.S. to attend graduate school for a MS in Communication and a Certificate in Human-Computer Interaction.

“The usage of politeness strategies in email discussions about taboo topics”

Computer-mediated communication, such as email, is a remarkable form of communication both because of its relative newness as a mainstream medium of language and because it is a means in which paralinguistic cues are totally absent from the exchange. This unique form of communication offers us a chance to understand how social relationships are built and maintained in an environment in which interlocutors not only lack these cues, but are participating in a form which has had little time to develop firm rules of conduct. This study attempts to analyze how people employ politeness strategies in order to discuss taboo topics via email. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), people will use certain politeness strategies that will help save the face of the participant and themselves. These strategies will vary when communicating with people of different levels of intimacy. In this study, I compare the politeness strategies used in a series of emails that participants wrote to close friends and to total strangers. I analyze several features of language in the emails and compare them across three different taboos. I then compare the findings with what we would expect to find in a face-to-face interaction.

Susan Conrad, PhD

Dr. Conrad is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics.  She does research and teaches courses focused on how language is used by people in various social contexts.  She specializes in "Corpus Linguistics" - a type of computer-assisted analysis for studying how language is used.

PhD (with Honors)  Applied Linguistics, Northern Arizona University, 1996; 

MA (with Distinction)  TESOL, Monterey Institute of International Studies, 1987;

AB (cum Laude)  Biology and English, Cornell University, 1982

David Potter

 I was born in Canon City, Colorado and started shortly thereafter on a meandering path that has taken me through Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and France.  I graduated from Columbia River High School in 1999, and spent the next few years exploring my sense of wanderlust.  I landed in Portland and enjoyed the rain and the blackberries while working toward graduation from PSU in the summer of 2006.  I majored in Applied Linguistics, with a French minor and a teaching English as a second language (TESL) certificate. I intend to earn a Doctoral degree in Computational Linguistics and am interested in developing wide coverage semantic and syntactic processing systems.

“NP and VP Coordination in the LTAG Syntactic/Semantic Interface”

Analysis of conjoined noun phrases (NPs) and conjoined verb phrases (VPs) remains problematic within the Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG) syntactic/semantic framework. This paper describes the interaction between the (Banik 2004) analysis of VP coordination and the (Babko-Malaya 2004) analysis of NP coordination, as well as other analyses within the (Kallmeyer and Romero 2004) framework, including quantified noun phrases, quantifiers on the verbal spine, questions, attitude and raising verbs.  Next, this paper explores cases where the presented analyses fail to derive the expected interpretation.  Finally, this paper presents an analysis that succeeds in analyzing some previously unresolved cases of NP and VP coordination in the context of other constructions, while suggesting direction for further research on coordination.

Thomas Dieterich, PhD

 Dr. Dieterich is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Portland State University. He received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Yale University in 1974,

and worked for several years at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C., before joining the Portland State English Department. Dr. 

Dieterich is a charter member of the Department of Applied Linguistics, founded in 1987. His interests are syntax and semantics, 

English historical grammar, and psycholinguistics.

Tamam Waritu

My name is Tamam Waritu and I was born in a small town called Assassa, Ethiopia, East Africa. I came to the United States in 1999 when I was 16 years of age. I come from a family with no background in education. My mother has never gone to school and my father has only a fourth grade education. I have six brothers and seven sisters. I am the middle one. I am also the first person in my family to go to college. I graduated from Jefferson High School in 2003. I am a junior at Portland State University majoring in International Studies (IS). I plan on earning a BA in IS at PSU, then continuing to graduate school to get my Master and Doctorate in IS and Black Studies. 

“Strategies for Increasing and Retaining African American students in Engineering and Science Fields”

My project examines in-depth the lack of African Americans in science, engineering and mathematics. Through qualitative interviews, this paper explores the perceptions of African American students attending universities as well as community colleges and studying science, engineering, and mathematics. The study focuses primarily on the question of why there are so few African Americans in science and engineering.

E. Kofi Agorsah, PhD

Clare Washington

I was born in Los Angeles, California, but was raised in Riverside, California.  I was never interested in the past, until I began researching my own family’s history.  I could find nothing written in my high school history books about African American females.  This led to passionate research on the treatment (or mistreatment) of African American women, especially the more obscure women and their contributions to history and their communities.   I am grateful that the McNair Scholars Program has given me the experience to further my research and eventually obtain a PhD in African Studies.

“Women Warriors: Female Leaders in Resistance, Revolts, and Rebellions”

Much of the recorded history of heroes and important personalities of the Americas has featured mainly men and very little about women and even much less on minority women.  High school history texts only refer to the few prominent women such as Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks of the USA and Nanny of Jamaica, giving the impression that minority women contributed little to history.  My project is to identify these more obscure personalities and to investigate their contributions to resistance against slavery. I contend that female slaves rebelled, resisted slavery, ran away, and even led runaway slave groups just as male slaves did. Female slaves’ resistance to slavery and oppression was expressed in many different rebellious ways -- not always violent -- not always aggressive.

E. Kofi Agorsah, PhD

Andrea Winters

I was born in Reno, Nevada and moved to Portland, Oregon as a young child. Despite having grown up amongst chaos, with periodic heroin addicts for a mother and a sister, constant relocation and attendance at eight different schools, I was instructed to go to college. I took my passion to the university classroom in 2003 to learn about psychology, as my upbringing had perplexed me about human behavior. For the last two years, I’ve worked in the social services field with alcohol and drug-addicted youth. I plan on earning my degree in Psychology from Portland State University, and attending graduate school elsewhere to pursue a PhD in Social Psychology with an emphasis in Sociology.

“Influential Factors of Parental Substance and Alcohol Abuse on Children’s Academic Achievement”

There is much research to support the idea that parental involvement benefits a child’s educational performance. There is also strong evidence demonstrating that parental substance or alcohol abuse increases a child’s risk for behavioral problems that include drug and alcohol abuse, social-skill deficits, and low educational attainment. Very little current research has focused specifically on children of substance abusers who, against the odds, achieve academically by attending college. This study investigates the relationship between parental substance or alcohol abuse and children’s academic achievement. Data will be collected using a self-report survey from adult-children who self-identify as being a child of a past or present substance or alcohol abuser and are currently attending college. This study hopes to identify strategies that were used by the subjects to surmount family dysfunction and which helped them to pursue higher education. It is expected that these strategies could be used as interventions to help other students by encouraging their academic progress and achievement even amid dysfunctional, substance abusing family situations. Positive psychology and resilience theory concepts are used to explain findings.

Valerie Stewart, PhD