Council on Academic Affairs: Minutes (October 01, 2025)

Minutes from the Council on Academic Affairs' meeting on October 01, 2025

The New "Credential Game": The Disillusionment of Higher Education Promises and the Renarration of Education by Chinese and American Youth on Short-Form Video Platforms

This article explores how Chinese and American youth use short-form video platforms—TikTok, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu(RED)—to narrate disillusionment with the value of higher education. Drawing on 15 user-generated videos (2022–2024), the study adopts a qualitative interpretive approach to examine how young people articulate emotions such as anxiety, irony, and critique in response to credential inflation, employment instability, and shifting life expectations. Findings reveal cross-cultural convergence in narrative themes such as degree devaluation and career fallback, yet diverging emotional grammars and platform practices. Chinese youth often express frustration through metaphor, self-deprecating humor, and visually templated storytelling, shaped by cultural norms and algorithmic amplification. American youth, by contrast, use ROI logic and direct satire to critique systemic failure, often employing data and commentary as tools of affective protest. By treating short-form videos as cultural texts and affective publics, the article contributes to research on digital platforms, youth agency, and the global reconfiguration of educational legitimacy. It argues that platform logics and cultural constraints co-produce distinct narrative strategies through which youth render structural uncertainty visible and emotionally intelligible.No embargoAcademic Major: Sociolog

Microfluidic Manufacturing of PEG Surface-Conjugated Liposome-Encapsulated Hemoglobin

Over the past few decades, PEG surface-conjugated liposome-encapsulated hemoglobin (PEG-HbV) has been investigated as a red blood cell (RBC) substitute. However, the formulation and homogenization processes to refine the size of particles take extensive time and effort. Hence, microfluidic devices were explored to synthesize PEG-HbV by manipulating small volumes in a microchannel environment using a lab-on-a-chip approach. Microfluidic devices allow ease of scale-up, precise control of flow rates to adjust liposome size, and faster synthesis times. In this study, a herringbone microfluidic chip design was selected for the synthesis of PEG-HbV, wherein a lipid stream and aqueous stream converged and underwent chaotic mixing from pattern indentations to form liposomes. The lipid stream contained a solution of distearoylphosphatidylcholine (DSPC), distearoylphosphatidylethanolamine poly(ethylene glycol)5000 (DSPE-PEG5000) and cholesterol dissolved in pure ethanol. The aqueous stream contained human hemoglobin (hHb) dispersed in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). This study tested the parameters of lipid composition, organic phase-to-aqueous phase flow rate ratios, and hHb concentration. Based on results from microscopy, the morphology of synthesized PEG-HbVs was spherical, which confirmed the synthesis of PEG-HbV particles and entrapment of hemoglobin. The preliminary goal guiding syntheses was to produce monodisperse PEG-HbV particles with an average diameter of 200 nm. The particles manufactured ranged in diameter from 180 nm to 600 nm with some variability in size reaching over 1 µm, leaving room for further parameter optimization. Overall, this initial goal of this study was to determine the potential for using microfluidics to synthesize PEG-HbV as an RBC substitute, then to see how different parameters affect PEG-HbVs to try and match previous PEG-HbV dimensions.A three-year embargo was granted for this item.Academic Major: Chemical Engineerin

Plan-and-practice: Examples of student submissions

This is a supplementary file for an article published in Engaging Students: https://doi.org/10.18061/esm.698

Council on Academic Affairs: Minutes (April 2, 2025)

Minutes from the Council on Academic Affairs' meeting on April 2, 2025