Cross-cultural Travel: A Study of How International Travel at a Young Age Impacts Communication Skills as an Adult

Graduate Applie

Branding and Web Design for Inkululeko: With Freedom Comes Hope

My Honors Capstone Project is entitled “Branding and Web Design for Inkululeko: With Freedom Comes Hope.” I worked with a Syracuse native, Jason Torreano, who recently started up an education nonprofit in Grahamstown, South Africa. This program is called Inkululeko, which, in the local Xhosa language, means “freedom.” The organization seeks to combat the inequalities in education that are a result of Apartheid in South Africa. They operate under the belief that anyone deserves a quality education, and that education is the key to success in a place where people have been denied it for so long. This project allowed me to combine my interest in education with my skills in graphic design. I have been tutoring students from Somalia for the past four years at Syracuse, and although their situation is different, I have realized how important education is to a child or teen’s success. So I was drawn to this project because it allowed me to mix two of my passions together for a good cause. I did the majority of my work on this project when school was not in session, because I knew that this was the only time I would be able to design with a clear head. I designed the logo over winter break of my junior year, exchanging ideas with Jason the whole time. I began with sketches, and once we had settled on one that we liked, I began adding colors and typefaces. The finished product is an abstract combination of a sun emerging from a book. As per Jason’s request, the logo’s colors are bright (red, orange and yellow) and evoke a message of hope, change and movement. After I returned from studying abroad in the spring of my junior year, I began work on Inkululeko’s website. I had never designed a real website before, only non-functional mock-ups for class. Since I did not know how to code in HTML/CSS, I enlisted the help of a friend and iSchool student, Julie Dellinger, to code the site for me. After I designed each page in Adobe InDesign, I would send them to her to start coding. The process took the majority of the summer, and extended into the school year. During the fall of my senior year, I took a basic web design class, and am now able to make minor updates to the site at Jason’s request. In the future, Julie plans to create a Wordpress theme from the site, which would allow anyone – even those with no background in web design – to edit the site. In this way, it would function almost like a blog. Additionally, Jason has hired an intern to take my place next year, and I have been training this student and providing her with the necessary materials to carry on what I have started with Inkululeko. View the site: http://www.inkululeko.org

Cross-cultural Travel: A Study of How International Travel at a Young Age Impacts Communication Skills as an Adult

The purpose of the study “Cross-cultural Travel: A Study of How International Travel at a Young Age Impacts Communication Skills as an Adult\u27\u27 was to gather the perception of the weight of impact that traveling to foreign countries throughout childhood carries upon the individual later in life. This qualitative research approach focused on individuals who have spent extended periods of time in foreign cultures around the globe and with the inhabitants thereof, and assessed through interviews how past intercultural experiences through childhood contribute to effective engagement and communication throughout adulthood. This research provides insight for the audience in terms of how cross-cultural immersion throughout childhood provides valuable tools and life skills, but also displays the benefits of spending time in foreign cultures, as individuals prove to walk away with an increased understanding of various global lifestyles, regarding cultural norms, intercultural communication, and an applicable sense of how to integrate gained skills daily. This topic provides value through its distinctive findings regarding how intercultural engagement is beneficial for the individual growth and development of human beings, specifically within the realm of communicative behaviors, norms, and practices

Global governance under populism: the challenge of information suppression

Populists’ ideological opposi0on to global governance is well recognized, yet whether and how these actors systema0cally undermine interna0onal organiza0ons (IOs) remains unclear. We argue that a key means by which populists warp global governance is by distor0ng scien0fic informa0on, which is necessary for global responses to many public health and environmental issues. Populists are mo0vated to withhold or misreport scien0fic informa0on due to their an0-elite, pro-state sovereignty views. Using new data on the source and quality of informa0on provided to IOs, we find that populist leaders are significantly less likely to provide scien0fic informa0on to these organiza0ons than other types of leaders. When they do offer such data, it is less accurate than the informa0on supplied by other sources. Our findings suggest that populism may stymie interna0onal ins0tu0ons’ ability to govern in areas of pressing interna0onal concern

The impact of vaccination on gender equity: conceptual framework and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine case study.

BACKGROUND: Although the beneficial effects of vaccines on equity by socioeconomic status and geography are increasingly well-documented, little has been done to extend these analyses to examine the linkage between vaccination and gender equity. In this paper, evidence from the published literature is used to develop a conceptual framework demonstrating the potential impact of vaccination on measures of gender equity. This framework is then applied to human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in three countries with different economic and disease burden profiles to establish a proof of concept in a variety of contexts. METHODS: We conducted a literature review examining evidence on the linkage between health outcomes and dimensions of gender equity. We utilized the Papillomavirus Rapid Interface for Modelling and Economics (PRIME) model to estimate cervical cancer incidence and deaths due to HPV types 16/18 by age in each country. We estimated labor force participation and fertility effects from improvements in health, and converted these into inputs consistent with those used to calculate the United Nations Gender Inequality Index to assess gender equity. RESULTS: In our case study, we found that HPV vaccination among girls could help narrow socioeconomic gender disparities by quantifying the main pathways by which HPV vaccination improves health, which enables improvement in gender equity indicators such as labor force participation and maternal mortality ratios. While these improvements are small when averaged over the entire population, the components measured - labor force participation and maternal mortality ratio - account for 50% of the index scores. CONCLUSIONS: This proof of concept model is a starting point to inform future health and economic analyses that might incorporate the impact of gender equity as an additional impact of vaccination in improving the health and well-being of the population

Synoptic and Lake-Effect Classification of Snowfall in the Lake Michigan Region

This research is part of a broader project that explores the role of Lake Michigan in its regional climatology. Since 1950, the wintertime temperatures have risen, but snowfall amounts have stayed constant. This study explores snowfall events in October and November to see the role that early lake-effect snow has on the constant yearly snowfall average, as well as to see which areas around the lake are most impacted by lake-effect snow. In order to understand the role of lake-effect snow in the regional climatology, this study used the daily weather map archive to focus on the overall synoptic-scale pattern for each event. Through analysis of reported snow since 1950, the type of snowfall, either synoptic or lake-effect, has been categorized for the whole region. The six sub-regions surrounding Lake Michigan were also individually categorized. This research utilized statistical correlations to learn more about the distribution of synoptic versus lake-effect snow in each sub-region. By understanding the role of lake-effect snow in the regional climatology, improved forecasting tools for the Lake Michigan region can be created