Browsing by Author "Carnes, Nicholas William"
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Item Open Access Item Open Access DISI: A Model for Practical Interdisciplinary Education and Social Impact(2014-04-25) Heller, DanielIntroduction Duke Interdisciplinary Social Innovators (DISI) is a model for organizing graduate students at universities to do interdisciplinary, problem-oriented projects for non-profit clients. In its first year, 149 students from eight different Duke graduate schools will complete 24 projects for North Carolina social organizations. Eighty-five percent of students and 100 percent of clients expressed satisfaction with their first semester DISI project experience. As a result, The Scholar Strategy Network (SSN) is exploring the possibility of expanding the model to other Universities and has asked me to answer the following question. Policy Question How can graduate students set up an interdisciplinary, client-oriented service organization? Recommendations: The MP analyzes the steps DISI’s Co-Founders took to set up DISI at Duke and their successes and failures. It is too early to tell if the model will work in the long term. However, others who want to set-up similar organizations at other universities should use the following steps: 1. Analyze the graduate education structure of their school, determine if interdisciplinary collaboration is possible, what form it will take, and who are the key stakeholders to invest in the idea. 2. Recruit student leaders, have student leaders meet with key university and community stakeholders to solicit funds, student recruiting relationships, and non-profit project relationships. 3. Visualize an organization structure and a project team structure, using information provided here as a guide. Consider the academic calendar and the student culture of all graduate schools. 4. Create initial branding material. Recruit a few initial projects and determine initial Skill Share events to entice student participation and help. 5. Have initial investment meeting to recruit student volunteers to help over the summer. These students are potentially the first executive board members. 6. Use summer to plan and begin to plan and execute student recruitment, partner recruitment, fund solicitation, and skill share events as possible. This could include creating materials, outreaching to orientation leaders to plan recruitment events, and e-mailing non-profits. 7. When the school year begins, execute student recruitment and project matching processes. This includes interviewing project managers. 8. Monitor progress, execute Skill Share events and social events. 1.3 Methodology My strategy for answering the policy question included the following four major components. 1. Background research and a review of the relevant literature. 2. Review of the interdisciplinary landscape at Duke and other schools. 3. Review of the steps DISI’s Co-founders took to start the organ Duke. 4. Review of preliminary DISI data.Item Open Access Gentrification in the Wake of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis(2012-04-27) Coleman, CandaceFrom the late 1990s until the mid-2000s, real residential property prices increased by more than 80 percent in the U.S. housing market. After U.S. home prices peaked in 2006, the demand for home purchases and construction fell sharply. During the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, more than 60 million Americans experienced foreclosure while overall home prices declined nearly 31 percent since 2006. This paper explores the short-term effects of the subprime crisis on the urban housing market. More specifically, my thesis seeks to answer the policy question: In the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, what happened to gentrification in American cities? To better understand the relationship between the housing crisis and urban development, I will examine how the landscape of gentrification changed as a result of the collapsing U.S. housing market. From 2000 to 2006, gentrification became a mainstay of the American housing landscape. Researchers define gentrification as the process of rehabilitating depressed commercial and residential spaces in geographically urban areas. Many young, white, and college-educated homeowners purchased housing stock in urban neighborhoods for economic and aesthetic purposes. Although gentrification emerged in the 1960s, this phenomenon continued to grow during periods of economic decline. Many real estate experts believed that the subprime mortgage crisis would slow gentrification rather than stop the current trend indefinitely. Economists argue that an economic downturn forces capital to withdraw and retreat from land use possibilities in gentrifying urban areas. On the other hand, analysts argue that value-priced homes in center cities encourage investment from young urban-pioneers looking to purchase when the market has bottomed out. If “bargain hunters” are willing to invest now, they will benefit from lower home prices in neighborhoods driven by increases in the supply of single-family homes. In light of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, this paper examines: • The effect of the subprime mortgage crisis on gentrification trends in 14 major metropolitan cities; and • Whether gentrification is driven by preferences for affordable housing stock, or preferences for historic and/or luxury builds in periods of economic decline. The key findings of the paper are: Gentrification Increased in Most Cities -- Overall, gentrification did not slow down in the U.S. in the wake of the recession. In most cities gentrification increased despite economic pressures in the housing and financial markets. Only a small number of cities experienced little or no changes in gentrification levels. Detroit was the only city with declining levels of gentrification. In Williamsburg and Greenpoint, strong preferences for certain neighborhood amenities helped maintain demand for housing after 2008. Increased median rents and home values show that the Subprime Mortgage Crisis did not deter interest in these up and coming neighborhoods. Gentrification is thriving and quickly expanding to other parts of the borough, mostly because these neighborhoods are well served by public transport to Manhattan. Despite the economic downturn, Washington, DC’s Columbia Heights neighborhood experienced an increase in home and rental prices. From 2000 to 2006, income-driven preferences fueled gentrification patterns in Columbia Heights. Additionally, the share of the white college educated population continued to grow between 2006 and 2009. Low unemployment in the District helped to maintain and expand gentrification patterns in the area. While de-industrialization is the main contributor to Detroit’s collapse, the Subprime Mortgage Crisis has only worsened city conditions. The city’s core gentrifying demographic of college educated professionals left the city in search of better employment opportunities. Detroit’s downtown areas are still plagued by high vacancy rates, poverty, and chronic unemployment. However, early-stage re-gentrifiers are looking to create a Williamsburg effect. Detroit’s ability to successfully re-gentrify in the future is very much dependent on a healthy job economy.Item Open Access Public Opinion and the Environment: How Does Message Framing Influence Public Attitudes about Environmental Regulations?(2014-04-14) Grantham, SarahMessage framing is a common strategy that politicians, government officials, and the media use when communicating with the public about environmental issues. However, message frames about environmental regulations are often misleading, potentially reinforcing misinformation and misperceptions among the voting public. This may translate into a net shift in the level of public support for or opposition against environmental policies and regulations. With this paper, I attempt to answer the following policy question: how does message framing affect public opinion about environmental regulations? I first analyze a sample of polling data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research’s iPOLL Databank to: 1) identify the most commonly used environmental message frames over the past decade (2004-2014), and 2) determine how these frames affect survey results. Then, using these message frames, I conduct a survey of the voting public to examine whether persuasive pro-environmental messaging can elicit survey responses that differ from observed historical patterns. I find that message frames emphasizing environmental regulations’ benefits to public health and economic growth generate more pro-environmental responses than frames that simply stress the need for environmental protection. Environmental groups who engage in future policymaking and advocacy efforts can use these findings to inform more effective message framing strategies that may prompt the public to express greater support for environmental regulations and environmental issues in general.Item Open Access Put your comment where your money is: An analysis of public comments on annual proposed changes to Medicare reimbursement rates(2014-04-23) Trebes, NatalieThis paper examines the annual Medicare acute care hospital inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) rate update rules, which are consistent, comprehensive, and have a high impact on stakeholders. I collect a random sample of comments on IPPS rules for fiscal years 2005 to 2014, and generate a dataset with information about the types, locations, and expertise areas of authors and organizations submitting comments on these rules. I also examine the differences between payment rate values in proposed rules and corresponding values in final rules, and observe the relationships between these outcomes and the composition of public comments across a number of categorical aspects. Comments in the sample were predominately submitted by providers (both organizations and clinicians), which is unsurprising as these rules directly govern the payments made to these groups. Commenters usually had identifiable expertise in the areas of medicine, health, law, health administration, business administration, healthcare finance and accounting, public policy, or legislative affairs, and were largely concentrated in Washington, D.C., the Northeast, and the Midwest. There are some discernible correlations between the percentage of comments submitted by individuals with certain areas of expertise and changes made to payment rates (both in relation to final rates from previous years and proposed rates). A crude interpretation of these relationships purports that some subsets of commenters are particularly responsive to rate changes, and that in turn CMS is responsive to some of the positions advocated by other subsets of commenters.Item Open Access The Promise Neighborhood Model: Family Engagement Challenges and Best Practices(2014-04-17) Chudnofsky, AlyssaEXECUTIVE SUMMARY POLICY QUESTIONS What is a Promise Neighborhood and what are the different forms a Promise Neighborhood can take? How do Promise Neighborhood administrators engage community members and how do parents and caregivers respond to the Promise Neighborhood family engagement strategies? BACKGROUND Inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone, a Promise Neighborhood is a community centered on providing all children high-quality, coordinated health, social, and educational support from birth to college to career. The Obama administration currently funds Promise Neighborhoods in 20 states and in the District of Columbia. Three foundational principles of the Promise Neighborhood Initiative are (1) the Promise Neighborhood is not a one-size-fits-all model, but rather takes shape to the community it serves using community needs assessments; (2) Children and parents need wrap-around supports to foster a safe and healthy learning environment; and (3) community participation and buy-in are essential for improving the community. Martez Hill, the Executive Director of the North Carolina State Board of Education, is interested in learning about the Promise Neighborhood model. He wants to know the various forms Promise Neighborhoods can take (e.g. their governance structure, the number of nonprofits involved, the number served, etc.). Because community engagement is such an essential component, he also wants to understand the strategies Promise Neighborhoods use to recruit families to participate. DATA AND METHODS In this project, I studied three different examples of Promise Neighborhood models including the East Durham Children’s Initiative, the Kinston Promise Neighborhood, and the D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative. First, I conducted in-depth interviews with administrators to learn how they recruit children, parents, and caregivers to participate. Second, I conducted in-depth interviews with parents and caregivers to learn why they participate in the Promise Neighborhood programs. This expands the current research by incorporating administrators’ perspectives to learn their strategies and by interviewing parents and caregivers specifically on family engagement; this has not been done before. I also developed profiles on the three neighborhoods to illustrate the different forms Promise Neighborhoods can take. FINDINGS Each administrator stressed the importance of involving community members in the Promise Neighborhood planning process. Each program also emphasized their collaborative efforts with local schools to share information with parents or caregivers. While the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative utilizes a grassroots approach to community engagement, the East Durham Children’s Initiative and Kinston Promise Neighborhood have fewer resources. Instead, they rely on alternative recruitment strategies such as providing a parent advocate program and a parent and community advisory committee. Parents, caregivers, and administrators explained that the main challenges to program participation are time constraints, transportation, and competing priorities. Many parents or caregivers expressed their concern that many parents are not taking advantage of the Promise Neighborhood programming. They contribute their lack of participation to the aforementioned challenges, but also to the notion that many parents do not understand what being involved means. RECOMMENDATIONS When determining community engagement strategies for the Promise Neighborhood model, I recommend taking the following measures: 1. Engage families in the planning process 2. Partner with the local school 3. Develop a parent advocate program 4. Employ grassroots strategies 5. Determine how to best utilize parents and caregivers to communicate participation benefits to other community membersItem Open Access Three Papers on Public Schools and Political Participation Among Americans of Color(2023) Martinez, MaraynaFor students of color, how do school experiences early in life affect adult political participation later on? Political scientists have long understood that race plays a critical role in political behavior; however, scholars rarely investigate the features of American society that drive racial inequalities in outcomes like voting, volunteering for campaigns, and other forms of political participation. This study explores an important and underexamined source of long-term differences in political behavior: childhood experiences in schools. Using observational analysis of longitudinal datasets, I examine the relationship between public schools and political participation among students of color. My research highlights the important fact that public schools can influence both the resources students of color have later in life and the feelings they have toward government and politics—sometimes in opposing ways that ultimately leave students of color better-resourced but less confident in government and less likely to participate.
Item Open Access To Frac or Not To Frac: Campaign Donations and Legislator Behavior(2014-04-25) Landes, MichaelFew academics have closely inspected the influence of money in state-level elections, leaving a gap in the literature with respect to how special interests garner votes in state legislatures. This study examines the relationship between campaign donations and legislator behavior using OLS regression analysis on the voting record of 176 state senators and representatives in the North Carolina General Assembly on three bills related to hydraulic fracturing. Regression results show that the percentage anti-fracking donations make up of a legislator’s total donations is positively correlated with a likelihood to vote against a pro-fracking bill. Results are less conclusive for the relationship between pro-fracking interests and likelihood to vote for a given bill, though there is a strong positive correlation between a legislator’s affiliation to the Republican Party and her likelihood to vote for a pro-fracking bill. These findings do not invalidate the hypothesis that legislators who receive money from pro-fracking interests are more likely to vote in favor of a pro-fracking bill. More data and further study of this subject are necessary to appropriately assess the relationship between campaign donations and legislator behavior.