Health and sustainable development

If sustainable development is to mean anything, people must be healthy enough to benefit from it and not have their lives cut off prematurely. Development without health is meaningless. But the processes which are likely to occur in a world undergoing globalisation, climate change, urbanisation, population increase and many other changes, will impact upon human health in complex ways. Some of them will benefit us, others will create new or augmented threats to survival and health, while many others will have a complex mixture of effects

Two-Tiered Summer Bridge Programming for At-Risk Engineering and Computer Science Students

In this paper, we report on the summer bridge programs offered by University of Portland to support “at-risk” freshman and sophomore engineering students. We define “at-risk” students as first and second-year students in good academic standing (i.e., not on academic probation) who are behind in their degree progress, either because they were not calculus ready when they started college, or because they did not earn a sufficient grade in one or more courses during their first two years in college. Each program targets students at a different point in their education: incoming freshmen and rising sophomores. We developed these bridges in conjunction with a grant-funded retention program and they have evolved based on quantitative and qualitative assessment data. By implementing these interventions, we hope to address the two major leaks in our retention pipeline: between the first and third semester and between the third and fifth semester, so that students graduate within a four-year timeframe that aligns with their financial aid

Richard Sidney Sayers (1908–1989)

Richard Sayers’s greatest strength was as an economic historian of institutional changes within the British financial system, especially relating to the Bank of England, for which he became the second official historian covering the years 1891-1944; but also writing the histories of Lloyds and Gilletts, and a wider study entitled Financial Policy, 1939-45. Nevertheless, he is best known for two other contributions. First, his textbook, Modern Banking, remained required reading on this subject for all British undergraduates from 1937 until the early 1970s; second, he played the major role in the domestic monetary analysis of the Radcliffe Report (1959). This latter role was often not well received, and his historical and institutional approach to the subject began to be treated as unfashionable and outdated, so that Sayers, always a lone introvert, had a somewhat sad end to his lif

Richard Sidney Sayers (1908–1989)

Richard Sayers’s greatest strength was as an economic historian of institutional changes within the British financial system, especially relating to the Bank of England, for which he became the second official historian covering the years 1891-1944; but also writing the histories of Lloyds and Gilletts, and a wider study entitled Financial Policy, 1939-45. Nevertheless, he is best known for two other contributions. First, his textbook, Modern Banking, remained required reading on this subject for all British undergraduates from 1937 until the early 1970s; second, he played the major role in the domestic monetary analysis of the Radcliffe Report (1959). This latter role was often not well received, and his historical and institutional approach to the subject began to be treated as unfashionable and outdated, so that Sayers, always a lone introvert, had a somewhat sad end to his lif

Risk factors for infection with Giardia duodenalis in pre-school children in the city of Salvador, Brazil.

A cross-sectional study of 694 children aged 2 to 45 months selected from 30 clusters throughout the city of Salvador, Bahia (pop. 2.3 million) was carried out as part of a longitudinal study of diarrhoea in order to identify risk factors for infection with Giardia duodenalis. Variables studied included three social and demographic factors (such as mother's education and marital status), five relating to the peri-domestic environment (rubbish disposal, open sewers, paving of the street), seven relating to the home itself (house construction, susceptibility to flooding, water supply and sanitation) as well as a score for hygiene behaviour based on structured observation. After multivariate analysis using a hierarchical model, only four significant risk factors were found: (a) number of children in the household under five years (b) rubbish not collected from the house (c) presence of visible sewage nearby, and (d) absence of a toilet. All four were significant at the 1% level

Using Assessment to Continuously Improve the Retention & Persistence of At-Risk Engineering Students

At the University of Portland, studies show that students who are behind in their degree progress are not retained at similar rates as their on-track cohort and can be considered “at-risk”. For the past three years, with NSF support, we developed a voluntary retention program to support students who are considered “at-risk” of leaving the Shiley School of Engineering. “At-risk” students start behind or fall behind in their STEM courses, although they are in good standing academically i.e., they are not on academic probation. The Program includes multiple interventions targeted at increasing the persistence and ultimately the retention of these at-risk students, including, among others, year-long counseling focused on community building and academic support, and various opportunities for students to regain cohort status academically. Throughout the NSF-funded Program, we assessed particular interventions using both quantitative and qualitative studies. In this poster, our objective is to present the various iterations we made to the Program based on the ongoing assessments

Best Practices for Advising At-Risk First-Year Engineering Students

This paper reports on challenges identified and best practices developed through advising at-risk first-year engineering students, synthesizing both existing literature as well as the experiences of advisors and faculty members in the School of Engineering. Based on conversations with and feedback from firstyear students, it has become clear that at-risk students face unique challenges that can affect their persistence in engineering. These challenges include: the high school to college transition, the difficulty of high-achievers experiencing failure for the first time, the competitive culture of engineering, learning how to take ownership of the college experience, and pressure in high-stakes courses. With these challenges in mind, the School of Engineering has adopted a number of best practices that are targeted specifically at supporting at-risk first-year students. These best practices include: group advising, holistic advising, growth mindset strategies, flow charts, student socials, and student assessment