A review of the APC and CPD requirements of five built environment professional bodies

Built environment higher education is significantly concerned with education for the professions. This is reflected in the substantial number of professionally accredited built environment degree courses and by the fact that degree course study underpins a significant route to membership of many professional institutions. This working paper reviews the entry requirements – the assessment of professional competence (APC) - and the continuous professional development (CPD) requirements of five built environment professional institutions. The five professional institutions included within this review are: § Association of Building Engineers (ABE); § Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB); § Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA); § Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS); and § Royal Town Planners Institute (RTPI). These Professional Institutions accredit a significant number of Built Environment courses and are all members of the Construction Industry Council (CIC). The review provides a consolidated source of reference for tutors, higher education applicants, students and graduates of accredited built environment courses, novice professionals working towards professional membership and current professional body members undertaking CPD activities

The Creation of Education by Hispanic Women

This paper examines the experience of Hispanic females in the public school in relation to how alternative learning, which takes place outside of classroom activities and discussions, generates a distinct method by which to gain an education. Four major frameworks utilized in discussing minority participation in education are presented and a focus on gender differences in education is submitted. This is followed by information obtained through an in-depth interview process. Analysis of the information shows the failure to account for differentiation between male and female Hispanics presents an assimilationist posturing of research. By placing race/ethnicity, class, and gender on equal footing in research, the institution of education may learn to adapt itself to the unique process of becoming educated which has been developed by Hispanas

Making sense of British newspaper campaigns

In the first quarter of 2013 Ghana reported 7 cases of measles; Britain reported over 900 – the second highest in the EU. Ghana had a 100% vaccination rate; in Britain most reported cases were among 10- 16 year olds in areas where vaccination had fallen to 50%. Last month the British government said it would lobby the European Commission to relax the restrictions on GM food and crops. In 2012, 270 million ha of GM crops were grown in 28 countries; in the EU only 2 such crops have been licensed for commercial cultivation and the only country where they are grown in any sizable quantity is Spain. None are grown or sold in Britain

Exploring a curatorial turn in journalism

Curation has moved from the ‘rarefied’ atmosphere of museums and exhibitions into journalism where new discourses and practices are proliferating. The changes have attracted academic attention such that journalism is now facing its own curatorial turn akin to what Paul O’Neill identified in museum studies. This article draws on a meta-analysis of journal articles in the field to argue that the prevalent instrumentalist definitions of curation are necessary but not sufficient to capture what the shifts in discourse and practices mean for journalism. In order to derive a more nuanced conceptualization of curation that includes the instrumental and metaphorical, the article draws on literature beyond the field of journalism studies to trace the changing meanings of the term from curation from antiquity to the digital age. The conditions are propitious for the movement of new practices into newsrooms but where it fits in relation to existing professions is intellectually unclear because of a lack of conceptual clarity as to how curation overlaps and differs from other roles. The article offers a preliminary attempt to address this

MCTs and universities: new risks, new visibilities and new vulnerabilities

Universities have long used new technologies to enhance teaching but mobile communication technologies (MCTs) are posing new ethical and policy challenges. The capture functions on MCTs bring considerable benefits in terms of a student being able to play back and review what was said in the teaching rooms. However, the convergence and connectivity of web 2.0 and its successors add new, as yet largely uncharted dimensions. It not only extends the classroom but also renders previously bounded teaching and residential spaces porous as anybody who has access to these rooms and a MCT can capture and open to outside scrutiny what previously would have been relatively private spaces. This has contradictory ethical implications. Abuses of power and indiscretions can be held to account before wider public opinion. However, the capture and dissemination of sensitive personal information in the form of the opinions, beliefs and ideas of students and staff can expose individuals to risk. Furthermore, the technologies also enable acceptable content to be edited and/or reformed into mashups that may not be intended to be malicious but have the potential for reputational damage. This paper explores these issues first in terms of a range of events and incidents that highlight new vulnerabilities and visibilities. It then outlines some of the policy responses in the United States in terms of cyberbullying; in the UK under data protection; and the implications of a proposed new EU directive. However, it argues, that the fundamental limitation with all of these is that ultimately the institution does not own the device and therefore its control of how it is used is limited. The paper concludes with some preliminary findings on how a handful of British universities are adopting a proactive response here

Improved astrometry for the Bohannan & Epps catalogue

Aims: Accurate astrometry is required to reliably cross-match 20th-century catalogues against 21st-century surveys. The present work aims to provide such astrometry for the 625 entries of the Bohannan & Epps (BE74) catalogue of H$\alpha$ emission-line stars. Methods: BE74 targets have been individually identified in digital images and, in most cases, unambiguously matched to entries in the UCAC4 astrometric catalogue. Results: Sub-arcsecond astrometry is now available for almost all BE74 stars. Several identification errors in the literature illustrate the perils of relying solely on positional coincidences using poorer-quality astrometry.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure. Accepted in A&

The Professional Responsibility Case for Valid and Nondiscriminatory Bar Exams

Title VII protects against workplace discrimination in part through the scrutiny of employment tests whose results differ based on race, gender, or ethnicity. Such tests are said to have a disparate impact, and their use is illegal unless their validity can be established. Validity means that the test is job-related and measures what it purports to measure. Further, under Title VII, even a valid employment test with a disparate impact could be struck down if less discriminatory alternatives exist.Licensing tests, including bar exams, have been found to be outside these Title VII protections. But the nondiscrimination values that animate Title VII disparate impact analysis for employers apply just as fundamentally to attorney licensing through principles of professional responsibility and legal ethics.This Article examines the civil rights cases from the 1970s that established bar examiners’ immunity from Title VII. It then analyzes our professional duties of public protection, competence, and nondiscrimination that require valid, nondiscriminatory attorney licensing tests, suggesting that the Title VII framework be borrowed for this purpose. The Article then undertakes that scrutiny, presenting evidence of the disparate impact of bar exams and their unproven validity, and suggesting feasible, less discriminatory modifications and alternatives. In other words, core professional responsibilities require consideration and adoption of valid licensing mechanisms that can reduce any disparate impact in who we permit to enter our profession, and who we exclude

Emission-line stars in the LMC: the Armagh survey, and a metacatalogue

[Aims] Accurate astrometry is required to reliably cross-match 20th-century photographic catalogues against 21st-century digital surveys. The present work provides modern-era identifications and astrometry for the 801 emission-line objects "of stellar appearance" in the Armagh survey (the largest of its nature to date). [Methods] Targets have been individually identified in digital images using the Armagh Atlas and, in most cases, unambiguously matched to entries in the UCAC astrometric catalogues. [Results] Astrometry with sub-arcsecond precision is now available for all the major photographic spectroscopic surveys of the LMC. The results are used to compile an annotated metacatalogue of 1675 individual, spectroscopically identified candidate H-alpha-emission stars, including detailed cross-matching between catalogues, and resolving many (though not all) identification ambiguities in individual primary sources

What Law Must Lawyers Know?

What constitutes the body of legal knowledge that every lawyer mustpossess? I used to know, or think I did, but no longer. I suspect no one elseknows either. This difficult question is not just an intriguing theoreticalmatter but also an urgent, practical problem. Licensing regulators assumethat minimal competence in any profession requires certain fundamentalknowledge, skills, and abilities.Bar examiners must determine whatknowledge, skills, and abilities are necessary for minimum competence asan attorney and then design tests and other requirements to attempt to alignlicensure with minimum competence. Today’s tangled attorney licensingpuzzle cannot be solved without better answers to this foundational question:what law must every lawyer know