PSU History
Rhen completed her BS and MSW at PSU. She has been teaching at PSU since 2011 in the School of Social Work and is currently a Doctoral Candidate.
Experience
Rhen has 15+ years of experience in Portland, OR non-profits, school, and community-based organizations. Her community-based research has taken her across several school districts including PPS, David Douglas, Reynolds, and Beaverton. Her research and evaluation work in Portland over the past several years has been deeply grounded in an anti-oppressive and participatory approach. As a doctoral student she presented a paper at SSWR about student food insecurity, which was later published Journal of Social Work Education. She also presented at SSWR on school climate as it relates to equity and racism in schools. Some of her speaking engagements include Promoting Equity through Youth Engagement, at the Twelfth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic, and Social Sustainability in Portland, OR.; Innovative ideas to Build Youth Voice in your Youth Program, speaking about youth development programs hosted at the Institute for Youth Success at Education Northwest; American Circus Educators and Circus Talk panels, workshops, and presentations on trauma-responsive and equity driven teaching and program development.
Academic/Research Interests
Participatory research and evaluation; youth-led evaluation; participatory programming; movement, performance and post-traumatic growth and healing.
Personal Interests
Rhen’s commitment to creating and changing programs for youth to share power, magnify silenced or excluded voices, and to integrate a liberatory, anti-oppressive, trauma-responsive approach to her work has been a driving force in her role as Pathways Manager and the growth of the Voice Project (at Circus Project).