Building Belonging

This project comes from a deep love of the idea of creating cultures of belonging, originating from my own relationship with community, in which my life was saved by the loving generosity of the 12-step community. This connects to contemporary research on both the nature of, and need for, a sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself. This project begins with a review of current literature on the experience of belonging in the workplace, and the influence that feeling a sense of belonging within one’s organization has on well-being. It then goes into an exploration of current interventions that can be utilized to create cultures of belonging, most notably high-quality connection (HQC) building and appreciative inquiry. The remainder of the paper is a collection of suggestions for interventions and next steps to take when seeking to create a more comprehensive culture of belonging in the workplace. This work helps to drive deeper the importance of having organizational community and healthy interpersonal dynamics in the workplace. The broader implication is that belonging in the workplace is becoming more of a necessity for organizations, and this work helps to guide organizations on their first steps towards a more nourishing workplace community and a culture of belonging

Building Belonging Into the System

This design case documents how a K-12 district took steps to systemically support virtual student wellness and belonging. Plans for course design to support social-emotional-academic learning (SEAL) competencies, increase perception of belonging, and create safe, predictable learning environments characteristic of a trauma-informed approach to teaching and learning are shared. The assumption virtual learners are not looking to experience belonging and cannot be successful unless they already have strong SEAL skills is challenged. Rather, the positioning of SEAL competencies as learning objectives rather than necessary prerequisites to access online learning proved to contribute to more equitable learning opportunities

Growing Ideas - Building Belonging: Providing Guidance for Social Skill Development

As young children with and without disabilities grow, they are learning how to develop relationships with others and to be members of a community. All children need support to learn and achieve these important life skills. The process adults use to teach and support this learning is known as guidance. Effective guidance assumes the following conditions: Respect, understanding, and appreciation for every child’s unique qualities; Knowledge that children’s mistaken behaviors provide learning opportunities; An encouraging community where every child belongs and feels safe; and a developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive setting

Keynote: Building Belonging to Empower Staff and Students to Thrive

Strong social connections strengthen our immune system, lower anxiety and depression, and even help us live longer. Additionally, people who feel connected are more empathetic, trusting, and cooperative. This engaging and interactive session will provide participants with research, strategies, and structures for building belonging and cultivating connection in the classroom, the staff room, at home, and in the community

Building belonging in online WIL environments – lessons (re)learnt in the pandemic age: a collaborative enquiry

The theme of belonging in e-pedagogy gained currency in the 2000s when educational providers hastened to join the online teaching and learning boom and studies of building and maintaining a sense of community (SOC) proved central to this endeavour. Motivated by the pandemic-era necessity to convene teaching and learning online as part of a response to super-complexity as a defining feature of tertiary education in the 21st century, work-integrated learning (WIL) practitioners returned to this scholarship to consider, under pressure, modes of building SOC and belonging in online spaces. Underpinned by a broadly constructivist worldview and informed by the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, our COVID-age study considers what pedagogical strategies are viewed as affording learners this sense of belonging - or not. Using a collaborative enquiry to pool our perceptions and experiences from three WIL contexts, we ask how work-integrated learning (WIL) practitioners build belonging in online spaces and identify strategies learners perceive as valuable. Drawing on the authors’ small-scale studies of educator and learner experiences of online WIL (eWIL), our collaborative enquiry uses qualitative descriptive analysis to identify key themes in the voices of students. Advancing the scholarship, our study identifies three threads to the fabric of belonging: humanising online WIL; the importance of mentor presence; and fostering professional belonging. The study suggests that strategies impacting these three areas are at the heart of building belonging in online spaces, broadly envisaged as imagined professional communities of practice. Techniques viewed as successful are advanced as possibilities for enhancing pedagogy in online WIL communities

Structural Assessment and Upgrading for an Old Building Belonging to an Historical Multi-Sports Center in Naples

A significant number of non-ductile existing reinforced concrete frame buildings, built in different seismic regions around the world but without adequate seismic detailing requirements, suffered damages, or collapse after past earthquakes. In fact, these reinforced concrete frame buildings are much more susceptible to high level of damage or to collapse than modern code-conforming frames. A crucial issue in the community of the earthquake engineering is the assessment and the upgrading of these non-ductile reinforced concrete structures. In particular, a careful assessment of the existing buildings is very important in order to understand the failure mechanisms that govern the achievement of predefined limit states or the collapse of the structures. Only after an in depth seismic assessment, the best upgrading/retrofit strategy can be designed and applied to the structure. In some cases, the historical value of these buildings makes the assessment procedure and the upgrading design more complicated due to the constraints related to the limited possibility of interventions. In this work, a building belonging to an old multi-sports center, is used as case study. The complex orbits around the soccer stadium called Collana and located in Naples. This soccer stadium was initially built in the late '20s and then it was completely rebuilt in the post-war period and used as a sports center for different sporting activities. Currently, the complex includes a soccer field, an athletic track, three indoor gyms, three tennis fields, a medical center sports, and the indoor pool building investigated herein. The analysis of seismic vulnerability implemented for the case study building shows an unsafe condition under both vertical and seismic loads. The building upgrading is provided choosing the best strategy among different options in order to achieve a certain predefined threshold of the seismic safety for the building. Definitively, the paper presents a real upgrading design case study for a building belonging to an historical complex. Assessment and upgrading are shown based both on linear and dynamic non-linear analyses procedures. Finally, the effectiveness of the structural interventions of upgrading is measured coherently with the new Italian guidelines for seismic risk classification of constructions

Predicting the Impact of Climate Change on Thermal Comfort in A Building Category: The Case of Linear-type Social Housing Stock in Southern Spain

The Climate Change scenario projected by the IPCC for the year 2050 predicts noticeable increases in temperature. In severe summer climates, such as the Mediterranean area, this would have very negative e ects on thermal comfort in the existing housing stock, given the current high percentage of dwellings which are obsolete in energy terms and house a population at serious risk of energy poverty. The main aim of this paper is to generate a predictive model in order to assess the impact of this future climate scenario on thermal comfort conditions in an entire building category. To do so, calibrated models representing linear-type social multi-family buildings, dating from the post-war period and located in southern Spain, will be simulated extensively using transient energy analyses performed by EnergyPlus. In addition, a sensitivity analysis will be performed to identify the most influential parameters on thermal discomfort. The main results predict a generalized deterioration in indoor thermal comfort conditions due to global warming, increasing the average percentage of discomfort hours during the summer by more than 35%. This characterization of the future thermal behaviour of the residential stock in southern Spain could be a trustworthy tool for decision-making in energy retrofitting projects which are so badly needed. To do so, further work is required on some limitations of this model so that di erent user profiles and typologies can be represented in detail and an economic assessment can be included

TORTS-LIABILITY WITHOUT FAULT

The defendant operated a lawful dry cleaning business employing a very inflamable liquid (varnolene) as a cleaning agent. Through no negligence on the part of the defendant, a considerable amount of varnolene escaped into the drain and found its way to a creek which ran behind the defendant\u27s premises. Here the varnolene was ignited by sparks from a back-firing gasoline engine operated on adjacent property by a third party. The fire spread downstream and damaged a building belonging to the plaintiff. Held, the plaintiff was not entitled to recover. Kaufman v. Boston Dye House, (Mass. 1932) 182 N. E. 297

Peer-mentorship and first-year inclusion: building belonging in higher education

BACKGROUND: An inclusive academic environment is pivotal to ensure student well-being and a strong sense of belonging and authenticity. Specific attention for an inclusive learning environment is particularly important during a student's transition to higher education. At Utrecht University's Medical School, explorative interviews with students from minority groups indicated they did not always feel included during the orientation programme of their academic education. We, therefore, developed a bias awareness training with theoretical and practical components on diversity and inclusion for peer-mentors who are assigned to each first-year student at the start of university. METHODS: At the end of the orientation programme, we investigated the effectiveness of the training for two consecutive years using two measurements. Firstly, we investigated the behavioural changes in the peer-mentors through a (self-reporting) questionnaire. Additionally, we measured the perceived inclusion of the first-year students, divided into belonging and authenticity, using a validated questionnaire. RESULTS: Our results show that peer-mentors found the training useful and indicated it enabled them to create an inclusive atmosphere. Overall, students experienced a high level of inclusion during the orientation programme. After the first year, the bias training was adjusted based on the evaluations. This had a positive effect, as mentors felt they were significantly more able to provide an inclusive orientation in the second year of this study. In line with this, students experienced an increased level of authenticity specifically due to the peer-mentor in the second year as compared to the first. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that training peer-mentors is an effective way to increase awareness and to ensure an inclusive atmosphere during the start of higher education

RPC application in muography and specific developments

Muography is an imaging technique for large and dense structures as volcanoes or nuclear reactors using atmospheric muons. We applied this technique to the observation of the Puy de D\^ome, a volcano 2 km wide close to Clermont-Ferrand, France. The detection is performed with a 1m$\times$1m$\times$1.80m telescope made of 4 layers of single gap glass-RPCs operated in avalanche mode. The 1 cm$^2$ pad readout uses the Hardroc2 ASICs. The three data taking campaigns over the last three years showed that a RPC detector can be operated in-situ with good performances. Further developments to decrease the gas and power consumption and to improve the position and timing resolution of the detector are ongoing.Comment: XIII$^{\text{th}} Workshop on Resistive Plate Chambers and related detectors, Feb 22-26, 2016, Gent, Belgium, ClerVolc contribution 204. This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in JINST. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from i