Modeling Possibilities: Q&A with RWU’s Coordinator for LGBTQ Programs Gabriella Porcaro

RWU’s first-ever coordinator for LGBTQ programs discusses her role and vision for LGBTQ life on campus

Illinois Government Research no. 47 1978: Illinois Municipalities: Where have all the voters gone?

Politicians often lament the declining importance of local government in the United States. They point to an ever-growing, more inclusive federal government as evidence of the passing of government at the grassroots level. But judging by statistics from the last twenty years, Illinois municipalities, at least, can hardly be considered dead or even slightly ill. Thanks to the home rule provisions of the new constitution and to increased revenue from sources such as the state income tax and the federal revenue sharing programs, city governments are more active than ever before.published or submitted for publicatio

Ensuring Legal Boundaries With Religiosity in Public Schools

With varying sources recognizing significant religious shifts in recent years and years to come, teachers are faced with the task of developing curricula that include religious discussions more than ever before (Banks & Banks, 2004). At the same time, in our increasingly multicultural world, we are teaching to a more religiously diverse student population than ever before. This paper will articulate an investigation that is two-fold: first, the authors will gauge how educators employed at public K – 12 schools engage their students in discussions and activities pertaining to religion while upholding all legal and constitutional guidelines, and second, to relate what Teacher Education Programs (TEPS) may/may not be doing to prepare pre-service teachers for designing curriculum with the increasing religious shifts in mind

Factors Affecting Doctoral Educational Leadership Program Selection

Although recruitment has always been vital to sustained university admissions, it is true perhaps now more than ever as traditional public university programs face fierce competition for students from digitally-delivered and for-profit programs. Competition is fierce at every level of higher education, including the doctoral level. As competition has increased, so have the number of universities offering doctoral degrees (U.S. Department of Education [DOE], 2013). In 2011, Texas ranked fourth behind California, Florida, and North Carolina in the number of doctoral degrees granted in the United States. Furthennore, the number of doctoral degrees conferred in Texas grew from 8,959 in 2008 to 9,705 in 201 l(DOE, 2013) - a similar trend to most states across the nation that year. Of those, Texas has 26 public and private institutions - not including online universities - granting doctoral degrees in Educational Leadership (DOE, 2013). With the increase in traditional, online, and for-profit doctoral programs in Texas, existing programs may need to reevaluate efforts to stay competitive to survive in the current climate

Analyzing Conflict Freedom For Multi-threaded Programs With Time Annotations

Avoiding access conflicts is a major challenge in the design of multi-threaded programs. In the context of real-time systems, the absence of conflicts can be guaranteed by ensuring that no two potentially conflicting accesses are ever scheduled concurrently.In this paper, we analyze programs that carry time annotations specifying the time for executing each statement. We propose a technique for verifying that a multi-threaded program with time annotations is free of access conflicts. In particular, we generate constraints that reflect the possible schedules for executing the program and the required properties. We then invoke an SMT solver in order to verify that no execution gives rise to concurrent conflicting accesses. Otherwise, we obtain a trace that exhibits the access conflict.Comment: http://journal.ub.tu-berlin.de/eceasst/article/view/97

Financial literacy : an essential tool for informed consumer choice?

Increasingly, individuals are in charge of their own financial security and are confronted with ever more complex financial instruments. However, there is evidence that many individuals are not well-equipped to make sound saving decisions. This paper demonstrates widespread financial illiteracy among the U.S. population, particularly among specific demographic groups. Those with low education, women, African-Americans, and Hispanics display particularly low levels of literacy. Financial literacy impacts financial decision-making. Failure to plan for retirement, lack of participation in the stock market, and poor borrowing behavior can all be linked to ignorance of basic financial concepts. While financial education programs can result in improved saving behavior and financial decision-making, much can be done to improve these programs’ effectiveness

Variance Reduction Techniques in Monte Carlo Methods

Monte Carlo methods are simulation algorithms to estimate a numerical quantity in a statistical model of a real system. These algorithms are executed by computer programs. Variance reduction techniques (VRT) are needed, even though computer speed has been increasing dramatically, ever since the introduction of computers. This increased computer power has stimulated simulation analysts to develop ever more realistic models, so that the net result has not been faster execution of simulation experiments; e.g., some modern simulation models need hours or days for a single ’run’ (one replication of one scenario or combination of simulation input values). Moreover there are some simulation models that represent rare events which have extremely small probabilities of occurrence), so even modern computer would take ’for ever’ (centuries) to execute a single run - were it not that special VRT can reduce theses excessively long runtimes to practical magnitudes.common random numbers;antithetic random numbers;importance sampling;control variates;conditioning;stratied sampling;splitting;quasi Monte Carlo

Helping Public Housing Residents Find and Keep Jobs: A Guide for Practitioners Based on the Jobs-Plus Demonstration

This guide contains practical advice on implementing a program model -- known as the Jobs-Plus Community Initiative for Public Housing Families (Jobs-Plus) -- aimed at helping public housing residents find and keep jobs. The most rigorously evaluated employment program initiative ever tried in public housing, Jobs-Plus has shown strong potential for improving the employment outlooks of low-income workers and job-seekers. The guide draws on the experiences of six programs based in housing projects around the country that took part in MDRC's national Jobs-Plus demonstration