Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2021, International and Comparative Politics

Globally, the policies that states engage in concerning the cultivation, production, distribution, and sale of recreational cannabis in the 21st century is changing rapidly. Three countries have now legalized, regulated, and implemented recreational cannabis frameworks, albeit in starkly different ways. These countries are The United States of America, Uruguay, and Canada. This research identifies the contradictory nature of cannabis policy goals and compares the similarities and differences of each countries' recreational cannabis framework. It proposes a theory of understanding the contradictory nature of creating cannabis policies post-legalization and presents a framework from which to analyze the success of individual cannabis frameworks to contribute to furthering policymakers and the broader public's understanding of best practices.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Public Policy and Management

Evictions are endemic in the United States, affecting as many as 1 in 19 tenant households each year (Desmond et al., 2016). This number is expected to increase in 2020, affecting between 9 million and 15 million households and disproportionately hurting minority and low-income communities (Cunningham, Boshart, & Hariharan, 2020; Kleiner, Yerardi, & Rebala, 2020; Merle, 2020; Warnock & Salviati, 2020). Evictions are a symptom of and a contributor to poverty, resulting in material loss, homelessness, and poor mental outcomes. In Evicted, Matthew Desmond, whose work on forced moves has created a foundation for academic research on evictions, writes, “If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished Black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor Black men were locked up. Poor Black women were locked out” (Desmond, 2016, p. 98) Though the line Desmond draws between eviction and incarceration is merely symbolic, there is evidence to support the idea that the connection is more than metaphorical. Consequences of eviction, such as financial strain, displacement, and depression have each, separately, been linked to criminal justice outcomes. Yet little prior research investigates the direct link between eviction and criminal justice outcomes, like incarceration. The essays that comprise this dissertation use quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the spatial association, causal effect, and tenant perception of the relationship between evictions and incarceration. The first essay uses aggregated, geocoded data on evictions and incarcerations that occurred in Franklin County, Ohio, home to the City of Columbus, between 2011 and 2017. Using a spatial regression model with first-order spatial lags and error terms and temporal fixed effects, I find that, ceteris paribus, a 10 percentage-point increase in the incarceration rate within a block group is associated with a 3.31 percentage-point increase in the eviction filing rat (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Public Policy and Management

Consumers in the United States are beset by a number of serious financial issues and concerns that are unlikely to disappear in the near future. When issues such as high levels of consumer debt, financial illiteracy, and suboptimal financial management skills are coupled with the vulnerability to economic fluctuations and persistently low savings levels observed in the U.S., individuals may be rendered less capable of weathering even modest income and expense shocks and may face substantial financial distress over the course of their lives. Consumer credit counseling agencies offer a means of addressing the harms and risks caused by these economic realities. Given the reach of counseling initiatives, which serve millions of people a year, there is a distinct need for rigorous assessments of credit counseling's potential impact on client outcomes. Understanding the impact of these services helps validate credit counseling's potential as a lever for policymakers to employ in addressing the consumer financial issues associated with both economic shocks and longer-term trends in consumer behaviors. This dissertation focuses on two interventions housed within consumer credit counseling agencies: A credit counseling program and a financial coaching program. After outlining a conceptual framework through which the potential impacts of credit counseling may be understood, this dissertation empirically explores a nationwide credit counseling initiative and outlines a profile of counseling clients. To measure the impacts of this credit counseling program relative to the counterfactual, this dissertation estimates a series of differences-in-differences models to track outcomes for over 6,000 counseling clients relative to a matched non-counseled comparison group. The key finding of this analysis is that counseling clients reduce both revolving debt and total debt relative to the comparison group and these reductions hold when controlling for debt write-offs and debt (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Public Policy and Management

Public policies affect a wide range of stakeholders, intentionally and unintentionally, individually and collectively. Environmental policy, in particular, can affect the social and natural environments, and have broad effects beyond those intended by policymakers. This dissertation represents an effort to confront these complications by focusing on the socioeconomic equity effects of a set of environmental policies. Using a framework that encompasses a holistic approach to public policy and management research, the dissertation consists of three related projects that, taken together, describe in deep detail the how environmental policy decision making is affected by concerns over environmental justice. The first project is an aggregate evaluation into how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prioritizes the cleanup of hazardous sites nationwide. Using data from the EPA and U.S. Census, quantitative analysis reveals that the EPA tends to prioritize those sites deemed most risky, and that sites located in predominantly minority communities may proceed more slowly through the initial phases of the cleanup process, but are not less likely to ultimately be cleaned up than other sites. The second study is an investigation of three cases of localized projects that affect community environmental conditions. Using the comments provided during the preparation of three Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), this qualitative, exploratory project sheds light on the propensity of high socioeconomic status residents to engage in collectively organized action as compared to lower socioeconomic status residents, but finds that such collective action is of limited efficacy in achieving parochial interests of community residents. The third project is an attempt to explore the potential effects on neighborhoods of the mitigation of environmental risk. With little empirical data available to directly assess these affects in the aggregate, this project uses an agent-based mod (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Agricultural, Environmental Development Economics

This dissertation examines individual motivation to provide public goods and implications for public policy designed to influence private provision. It merges psychology and sociology with economics to develop a behavioral model in the context of an environmental issue. The model supposes that individuals have preference over their image of themselves as environmentally responsible people. This image is partially determined by norms they hold about how much to contribute to the public good. These norms, in turn, are influenced by policy-makers, for example through a mechanism such as environmental campaigns. The first chapter lays out the conceptualization of norms used in the subsequent chapters. The main points are that I distinguish between statistical norms, what “is” done, and injunctive norms, what “should” be done. Injunctive norms are sanctioned either by oneself, others, or both. This simple typology is contrasted with existing conceptualizations of norms in the literature. The second chapter is an empirical analysis which makes some conclusions about how norms affect self-sanctioning through a change in self-image. Survey data regarding hypothetical contributions to a carbon offsetting program show that (1) the higher is one's contribution, the higher is his self-image, and that (2) the higher is one's injunctive norm of how much he thinks one should contribute, the lower is his self-image. This indicates that, depending upon the context, the norm itself should enter individuals' utility functions. It is also shown that self-image itself increases after a contribution has been made, as opposed to individuals making a contribution that is consistent with a given self-image. Chapter 3 combines everything together into a theoretical model in which policy-makers can allocate a given amount of tax revenue between direct provision of a public good and influencing norms to try to increase private provision. An analytical analysis of efficiency and a simulatio (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Art Education

In American Canvas, Delaware's Arts Stabilization Fund, aka ArtCo, received national prominence as an innovate method to increase and leverage public and private dollars to support arts development at the state level. Arts endowment formation is not a new phenomenon, North Dakota and Montana both introduced endowments in the 1970s. Additionally, parallel or companion foundations as endowment strategies also have longstanding presence in public administration. The Indiana Endowment for the Arts, established in 1971, was among the first companion foundations at State Arts Agencies (SAAs) and the companion foundation in Ohio was created in 1995. Within the past twenty years, federal cutbacks, national disaster, and international crisis resulted in more SAAs shifting their foci to their own stabilization and sustainability through public and private arts endowments (PAE) development. This investigation is a collective case study of PAE supporting State Arts Agencies. Three reviews of fund development practices used in Delaware, Ohio, and Indiana identifies three examples of fund implementation approaches that are: Collaborative Management in Delaware; Project Management in Ohio, and Policy Management in Indiana. Similarities in purposes for United Arts Funds and companion foundations have also influenced collaborative endowment arrangements at SAAs with nonprofit arts organizations. Moreover, Arts Education, Artists Services, Professional Development, Leadership Institutions, workforce development, and ethnicity, diversity, and inclusion are issues related to fund development management, policy formation, and donor support. This research also illustrates how social, intellectual, and human capitals influence financial capital in PAE formation. Social Pluralism is introduced as a conceptual frame to further group and individual understanding about how cultural heritage and individualism are synthesized to develop a unique blend of ethnic and socio-economic cultural backg (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2005, School Of Interdisciplinary Studies - Interdisciplinary Studies

Wildlife enclosures are argued by environmentalists and politicians alike as being beneficial entities for surrounding indigenous groups. These areas provide environmental, economic, educational, and cultural opportunities as well as promote eco-tourism and conservation values. However, negative consequences of these spaces must not be abandoned. While biodiversity positively affects the tourist sector, increasing biodiversity increases parasitic reservoirs and, thus, parasitic loads. Accordingly, health status and quality of life are in jeopardy for nearby populations. This thesis explores the methodology and importance of combining environmental and public health policy in the case of Leishmania in Kenya's game reserves.

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2009, Urban Studies and Public Affairs

Problem: Recent research indicates a need for consumer participation in program decision-making and allocation of public funds. Traditionally, funding for social service programming relied on input from public administrators, policy makers, and the providers themselves; consumers were not necessarily included in this process. This study tests the implicit assumption that public “professionals” or “experts” have the knowledge and can adequately address the needs of the consumer. The question addressed is, “does consensus exists among the stakeholders who participated in Ohio's Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Coordination Project?”Methods: The survey concentrated on perceptions of Ohio's adolescent alcohol and drug treatment and the identification of treatment system gaps. The stakeholders are: the (1) Treatment providers (2) Referral agencies, and (3) Families of youth who received Adolescent Alcohol and Drug Treatment services. The sample was composed of 182 family respondents, 103 treatment provider respondents, and 321 referral agency respondents. Findings: In this study, the assumption that the treatment provider and referral agency stakeholders are the ‘experts' and know consumer perceptions of alcohol and drug treatment barriers was not supported. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) results indicate that there is not consensus among consumers, treatment providers, and referral agencies. In addition, when all the barriers were regressed in a Structural Equation iii Model the results show that there are significant differences in the perceptions of treatment barriers between the consumers and the referral and provider groups. Treatment providers and consumers agree on only two barrier issues and referral agencies and consumers do not agree on any issues. These findings indicate that consumers offer a different perspective than the other stakeholders and therefore should be an active participant in the decision-making process. Recommendations: The Ohio Department of (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2023, Spatially Integrated Social Science

The increase in rate of international migration to the United States since the late 1960s, coupled with a generally high rate among minority populations, altered the racial and ethnic composition of America's urban neighborhoods. The changing demography and increase in shares of minority subpopulations underscore the salience of conducting multigroup studies of residential and socioeconomic segregation beyond the traditional white versus black dichotomy. Segregation based on subgroup characteristics (de facto or de jure) is problematic, particularly for racial minorities and low-income residents who are limited in moving to areas they can afford. These minority neighborhoods are associated with physical and socioeconomic disadvantage due to public and private de-investment. The undercurrents of segregation were explored in the racial tipping point and white flight literature where non-Hispanic white majority residents exit old inner and central city neighborhoods when the share of minority populations increase beyond a critical threshold. Due to strong correlations between race and income, white flight also tends to concentrate poverty in the abandoned neighborhoods. Beyond this relationship between personal choice and segregation however, local and federal public policies have also been historically linked with segregating urban America. Federal highway programs, mortgage loan underwriting processes, suburban housing developments, and restrictive local zoning laws have created race and income-based segregated spaces. Also, reinvestment programs aimed revitalizing physical and socially distressed neighborhoods tend to yield minimal outcomes. This is often due to either limited funding compared to the magnitude of the problem or lack of sustained political commitment, overemphasis on market-based ideas which alienate minorities and low-income residents, and emphasis on new urbanism housing designs associated net losses in the public housing stock. In this dissertatio (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, History

Education remains one of the most polarized areas in American society. However, this is not a new phenomenon. From the 1950s to 1980, Congress, the executive branch, and judicial branch significantly increased their funding and oversight in public education. 1965 marked the year Congress passed legislation with the hopes of creating a more equitable system for all socioeconomic classes. However, conservatives also began to coalesce in the 1970s over segregation, helping spur the 1980 Reagan Revolution. 1981 marked the first year in over two decades where Congress cut the education budget for integrative services and changed how the federal government funded programs for low-income students. These changes were integral to the Reagan administration and conservative Congress's goals to reduce social services in an effort to reduce the budget and expand the economy while simultaneously preserving tax loopholes and cuts for the wealthy. Federal funding for social services like education saw cuts that hurt many of the gains that low-income school districts had seen over the previous two decades. One often overlooked piece of legislation–the 1981 Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA)–caused many of these changes. This act removed the protective language and funding that had helped lower income, bilingual, and segregated communities receive federal aid for the previous fifteen years. While creator John Ashbrook's initial intent for the ECIA was to give more power to local and state governments over education– something that conservatives thought was an important goal–the ECIA also ended integration programs and removed barriers to ensure funding went to high needs schools. These changes have affected education to this day.

Master of City and Regional Planning, The Ohio State University, 2022, City and Regional Planning

Exclusionary housing practices like redlining were used to create and maintain residential segregation, and the effects persist even after passage of the Fair Housing Acts. This thesis seeks a connection between redlining and its impact on public school closures, quality, and performance in the context of the city of Chicago. The levels of investment neighborhoods in the city receive directly influence the quality of education its students are receiving. The advocacy for and creation of alternative school choices have negative implications for neighborhood schools as it allows the wealthier families to move into (and gentrify) lower-income neighborhoods while sending their children off to higher ranked alternative schools instead of supporting their neighborhood schools.

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2022, Educational Leadership

This dissertation in practice examines the absence of an advocacy framework for Black placemakers in southwest Springfield neighborhoods seeking to transform vacant spaces into vibrant pocket parks, green spaces, and community gardens. This critical community-based participatory research addresses inadequate public policies, resources, and technical assistance to create and sustain neighborhood sites for endurance, belonging, and resistance. Thematic findings indicated that systemic issues, street-level organizing, and sustainability are primary barriers and opportunities. An action intervention and change process was developed to establish the Springfield Park and Green Space Ecosystem (SPGE). The action plan focuses on a community coalition of power building, a community benefits agreement, zoning revisions, and public-private partnerships with results-based accountability.

BA, Oberlin College, 2017, Comparative American Studies

This thesis examines how San Francisco vies for attention on an international stage, through destination cultivation and image management that is dependent on the criminalization of homelessness. This intertwined practice of aesthetic transformation with the rendering of homeless bodies as nonnormative and therein “removable” has fundamentally transformed public space in San Francisco. Public space redevelopment has been carried out through city planning, selective destruction and displacement, increased policing and securitization, and a rearticulation of social services and notions of “care” linked to punitive enforcement of the law. Neoliberalization of the built environment has engulfed thought on homelessness. As a result, municipal homeless policy is consumed by the practice of removing homeless people from “public” space in order to uphold aesthetic order. San Francisco homeless management in turn fails to challenge the structural causes behind homelessness and instead works to accommodate homelessness. This reproduces a logic that ignores injustices as a means of advancing neoliberal structures of global capitalism and is increasingly concerned with the isolation of poverty, boundary policing, and visible order. This work displays how market logics, commodification, and punitive discipline are articulated through primary sources like San Francisco's 1985 Downtown Plan, SRO destruction and displacement, the Union Square redesign, Union Square Business Improvement District literature and policy, “quality of life” laws, the San Francisco 311 app, mayoral campaigns to end homelessness, and Union Square Cares, a homeless service program operated by local businesses. Together these practices and technologies are part of a process of neoliberalization in San Francisco that erodes public space. Through a case study of Union Square, this redevelopment, city marketing, and aestheticization of space becomes clear, as does the criminalization and spatial management o (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2017, English

This project examines how writers compose research texts, such as reports, infographics, digital content—so that they might circulate. Specifically, I study a group of writers at The Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation (TWF) and their writing processes for their research texts, texts they write both to inform audiences and to motivate those same audiences to share and discuss the texts with others. TWF researches and distributes information on the unique socio-economic challenges women in Cincinnati face. They strive to change the local conversation about socio-economic issues so that everyone from citizens to businesses leaders to local politicians understand the distinct challenges that women face. They want to inform Cincinnatians about these issues and equip them to engage in discussions with others about these issues. Studying TWF's efforts to get their research texts discussed so as to change local conversations affords the opportunity to study how professional writers compose texts both to inform and to circulate. More specifically, it enables an examination of the ways writers compose amidst circulation, both its possibilities to expand conversations and its limitations. Additionally, it enables me to articulate specific strategies that other professional writers can draw upon in their efforts to compose texts for similar public engagements and circulation. To study TWF, I use a Circulation Studies methodology and corresponding methods to perform a multi-part case study of their strategies for a few representative research texts. I first outline the local conversation that TWF works to change, establishing the narrow constraints that influence what texts and information circulate. From there, I study TWF's understanding of that local conversation, particularly its narrow perspective on local social and economic issues. I next present how TWF incorporate that understanding into their research texts—infographics, reports, presentations, digi (open full item for complete abstract)

PHD, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geography

This dissertation provides the socio-economic weight of poverty in Cleveland history. Since the current geographical form of poverty is conceptualized based on the NEO- CANDO/CANDO dataset in 1993, the reliance of Cleveland welfare policy on this concept is significant. NEO-CANDO/CANDO dataset is a basis of Housing Opportunity for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) program of Cleveland; its demographic data collection became a framework to conceptualize/question what current geographical form of poverty of Cleveland is. This geographical context gives us two historical questions; first, the history of conceptualization of poverty, and second its impact in the history of Cleveland. Considering Cleveland was founded in 1796, it is possible to infer that the concept of poverty is transformative; it influences the shape of the urban environment. It is necessary to investigate the geographical correlation between the history of conceptualization of poverty and its impact to the change of urban environment. The study traces people's historical dialogues about poverty and how they applied their dialogue to shape Cleveland geographically from 1796 to 1991.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Sociology

For decades the study of unemployment has been dominated by psychologists and economists and has largely been overlooked by sociologists. When the world economy entered a period of prolonged economic decline in the fall of 2007, this began to change. During this period many workers found themselves facing extreme economic hardship as they were involuntarily unemployed for extended periods of time. Yet even as the Great Recession forced sociologists to rediscover the topic of unemployment, most of this research followed the traditions set forth by economists and psychologists by focusing on macro-level factors associated with the decline or the psychological responses of unemployed workers. While this research is important, it provides little insight into the lived experiences of unemployed workers and their families. In the following paper I begin addressing this gap by utilizing qualitative methods to explore the lived experiences of unemployed and underemployed workers during two of the most devastating economic collapses in U.S. history: the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Data on the experiences of workers during the Great Recession come from eighty-four semi-structured interviews with displaced workers in Columbus, OH conducted between 2012 and 2013. In contrast, the experiences of unemployed workers during the Great Depression are explored using research conducted by E. Wight Bakke and his team during the 1930s. The current analysis focuses primarily on the material responses of workers during both periods. Material responses are conceptualized as the strategies individuals and families employ in order to maintain their standard of living in the face of economic hardship. Given the substantial technological, industrial, and institutional changes that have occurred since the start of the Great Depression, one would expect there to be significant differences in the material responses of workers during both periods. Yet, the current analysis discovers t (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2011, Health Education

Obesity levels in the United States are at an all-time high. Being obese increases the risk for a host of diseases, such as cancer, osteoarthritis, depression, coronary heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. Since the year 2000, there has been increased interest in policy-level approaches aimed at curbing the obesity epidemic. Despite the increased use of policy approaches to reduce the obesity epidemic, the support of state legislators towards evidence-based obesity reduction measures is unknown. Seventeen hypothetical obesity reduction measures were gleaned from the literature and sent via a valid and reliable survey questionnaire to a random sample of 800 state legislators from all 50 United States. Legislators were asked to rate their level of support for each of the 17 hypothetical measures, rate how impactful each measure could be at reducing their state's obesity level, and identify potential benefits and barriers to the measures. There were 250 questionnaires returned for a 32% response rate. Respondents were approximately evenly split between Republicans (n = 117) and Democrats (n = 122) and were primarily White (79%), male (78%), and overweight or obese (43% and 22% respectively). Overall, public school and community-based measures were supported at approximately the same levels. Taxation-related measures were not well supported. Democrats, females, and non-White legislators were significantly more supportive of the measures when compared to Republicans, males, and White legislators, respectively. Linear regression revealed that political affiliation, perceived proper role of government, and perceiving obesity as a serious societal problem were significant predictors of legislator support. Legislator BMI, level of education, and geographic region were not significant predictors of support. The most common perceived benefit of passing the legislative measures was “improved health”. The most common perceived barrier was “not the role of government”. Public h (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2011, Human Ecology: Human Development and Family Science

Thirty-five participants aged 18 and older were studied in the examination of the public‘s perspective of homeless youth. Participants were administered a set of demographics questions and a survey whose structure was based on the work of Haidt & Hersh (2001) via the Social Networking Service Facebook. Thematic Analysis was utilized to qualitatively capture participant‘s emotional and physical response to scenarios that deliberately increased the participant‘s interaction with homeless youth(s) and/or the severity of the situation. Analysis showed that participants were unaware of the causes of youth homelessness and their experiences while on the streets. Participants exposed to the youths immediate needs were willing to meet them but did not typically suggest referring youths to services or suggest support for increased awareness and funding of such services.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Arts Policy and Administration

In this thesis, I track use of cultural economic rationales employed by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to secure public funding. I conducted a content and discourse analysis of Appropriations Hearings in both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees for FY 1967, FY 1982, and FY 1997 and articles from the Journal of Cultural Economics. My methodology, based on Focault's policy geneology and Kingdon's policy streams, helped explain how the NEA discusses and argues for public funding in a policy arena via the use of theories derived from cultural economics scholarship. The results show that depicting the arts as a public good was an overarching theme in the problem stream, with supporting arguments changing due to circumstances in the political or policy streams. This work has implications for how arts advocates can continue define and articulate their desire for increased public funding using the work of cultural economists.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2008, Arts Policy and Administration

For centuries, public art has been a popular tool used to celebrate heroes, commemorate historical events, decorate public spaces, and attract tourists. Public art has been created by the most renowned artists and commissioned by powerful political leaders. But, where is the public in public art? What is the role of that group believed to be the primary client of such public endeavors? How much power does the public have? Should they have? Do they want? In this thesis, I address these and other related questions through a case study of Millennium Park in Chicago. In contrast to other studies on this topic, this thesis focuses on the perspectives and opinions of the public; a group which I have found to be scarcely represented in the literature about public participation in public art.