UMaine EOC receives inaugural Black Bear Award for Extraordinary Impact

This spring, the University of Maine established the Black Bear Award for Extraordinary Impact, focused on recognizing an individual or group that goes above and beyond in performance excellence. Such positive impact is deep, significant and lasting, and is reflected campus wide and beyond in the quality of the student and employee experience. The inaugural recipient of the Black Bear Award for Extraordinary Impact is the UMaine Emergency Operations Center, which since February 2020 has provided and coordinated COVID-19 response for the UMaine and UMM communities

A Working Model for Evaluating Academic Excellence in Geoscience Education, Undergraduate, and K-12

This article discusses a model for academic excellence in the geosciences which can be used for K-12 and undergraduate education. The model combines criteria for excellence derived from studies of the National Research Council, the National Academy of Sciences, and other national professional organizations. It consists of two major components: opportunity for students to learn, and attainment at the highest structural and multidimensional levels. The author concludes that this model will be most useful as a working model for evaluation, as a reference for comparison, and as a guide for reaching excellence in geoscience education efforts. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Questing for happiness: augmenting Aristotle with Davidson

Original article can be found at: http://www.ajol.info/journal_index.php?jid=211 Copyright Philosophical Society of Southern Africa (PSSA)Drawing heavily on Aristotle, Tabensky attempts to establish ‘an ethic that flows from the very structure of our being’, but he also calls on Davidson’s arguments about the essentially social character of rationality to shore up Aristotle’s claim that we are essentially social beings. This much of his project, I argue is successful. However Tabensky takes this a step further and proposes a pluralist ethic on the grounds that a ‘fully’ or ‘properly’ instantiated account of the ‘ideal’ conditions for rationality requires encountering innumerable other points of view. Firstly, while confronting alternatives is essential to truth-seeking it hardly follows that an unconstrained pluralism represents an ideal condition for this kind of inquiry, since such an approach risks falling into mere clash of perspectives on practical grounds. Secondly, it is unclear how confronting more and more perspectives is supposed to help in enabling us to lead our lives well. In conclusion, picking up on this theme and looking again at Aristotle, I give reasons for questioning that the kind of rational choice involved in leading the good life, for reasons in part highlighted by Tabensky, benefits from analogy with the modes of conceptual rational inquiry in other domains in any case.Peer reviewe

Wild Emptiness: A Zen Approach to Environmental Ethics

When Buddhism took root in China and integrated with the nation’s Taoist intellectual climate, the tradition retained the orthodox central objective of overcoming suffering. While conserving this principal aspiration, the rise of Zen is associated with deviation from the orthodox practice of monasticism and toward the practical embodiment of emptiness while integrated in society, which can be likened to the practice of unwavering compassion. This piece offers a Zen approach to environmental ethics such that it is an attempt to explicate how and why an individual practicing Zen should compassionately engage with the earth. With respect to the Buddhist employment of skillful means, different approaches are offered as tailored ethical frameworks to appeal to individuals at different stages in their path to awakening. Furthermore, the environmental ethic appealed to by the awakened individual is explicated as spontaneous harmonization with the flow of emptiness, that which the Buddhists regard to be the driving force of the phenomenal realm. The awakened individual is considered to non-deliberately take on a lifestyle that provides perpetual intimacy with the rhythms of wild emptines

Electronic Health Records: Cure-all or Chronic Condition?

Computer-based information systems feature in almost every aspect of our lives, and yet most of us receive handwritten prescriptions when we visit our doctors and rely on paper-based medical records in our healthcare. Although electronic health record (EHR) systems have long been promoted as a cost-effective and efficient alternative to this situation, clear-cut evidence of their success has not been forthcoming. An examination of some of the underlying problems that prevent EHR systems from delivering the benefits that their proponents tout identifies four broad objectives - reducing cost, reducing errors, improving coordination and improving adherence to standards - and shows that they are not always met. The three possible causes for this failure to deliver involve problems with the codification of knowledge, group and tacit knowledge, and coordination and communication. There is, however, reason to be optimistic that EHR systems can fulfil a healthy part, if not all, of their potential

Sporting supererogation and why it matters

A commonly accepted feature of commonsense morality is that there are some acts that are supererogatory or beyond the call of duty. Recently, philosophers have begun to ask whether something like supererogation might exist in other normative domains such as epistemology and aesthetics. In this paper I will argue that there is good reason to think that sporting supererogation exists. I will then argue that recognizing the existence of sporting supererogation is important because it highlights the value of sport as a mutual pursuit of excellence and reinforces the value of sportsmanship

No Theory-Free Lunches in Well-Being Policy

Generating an account that can sidestep the disagreement among substantive theories of well-being, while at the same time still providing useful guidance for well-being public policy, would be a significant achievement. Unfortunately, the various attempts to remain agnostic regarding what constitutes well-being fail to either be an account of well-being, provide useful guidance for well-being policy, or avoid relying on a substantive well-being theory. There are no theory-free lunches in well-being policy. Instead, I propose an intermediate account, according to which well-being is constituted by endorsed veridical experiences. This account refers back to theories of well-being but does so as agnostically as possible. An intermediate account of well-being is meant as a policy guiding compromise between the different theories of well-being that make claims regarding what constitutes well-being. An intermediate account does as well as can be hoped for in providing a basis for well-being policy

Culture change in elite sport performance teams: Examining and advancing effectiveness in the new era

Reflecting the importance of optimizing culture for elite teams, Fletcher and Arnold (2011) recently suggested the need for expertise in culture change. Acknowledging the dearth of literature on the specific process, however, the potential effectiveness of practitioners in this area is unknown. The present paper examines the activity's precise demands and the validity of understanding in sport psychology and organizational research to support its delivery. Recognizing that sport psychologists are being increasingly utilized by elite team management, initial evidence-based guidelines are presented. Finally, to stimulate the development of ecologically valid, practically meaningful knowledge, the paper identifies a number of future research directions